Fred Ehrsam Net Worth: The Billionaire Behind Coinbase

Fred Ehrsam is a successful angel investor, serial entrepreneur, and cryptocurrency innovator, best known for cofounding largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., Coinbase. The $40 billion company has proven to be a major driver powering mainstream crypto adoption. He also cofounded Paradigm, the biggest cryptocurrency venture fund ever, which has invested in some of the most promising crypto startups in the world today. Fred Ehrsam’s net worth is estimated at about $2.1 billion, mostly thanks to his ownership stakes in Coinbase and Paradigm.

Ehrsam has already made waves in the financial community and was named on TIME Magazine’s list of 30 People Under 30 Changing the World in 2013 and Forbes’ 30 Under 30: Finance list in 2014.

Breaking Down Fred Ehrsam’s Net Worth

Fred Ehrsam had an estimated net worth of about $3.1 billion in 2024, though he lost a large portion of his wealth as the crypto market (and Coinbase stock) lost steam over the past year. Ehrsam owns about 4% of Coinbase stock which translates to around $1.6 billion at the time of writing.

Ehrsam has accumulated wealth as the co-founder of Paradigm and through angel investing although his income from these sources in unknown because the firm is privately owned.

It is also safe to assume that Ehrsam holds considerable wealth in Bitcoin. He first bought Bitcoin around 2010 while earning a Goldman Sachs trader salary. At that time, the value of Bitcoin was under a dollar, so if he kept much of his original investments, he could have easily made tens of millions of dollars on BTC alone.

Fred Ehrsam’s Early Life & Career

Ehrsam describes himself as having “grown up on the internet.” He played thousands of hours of World of Warcraft and was even a semi-professional gamer in high school. He was so obsessed with games that his parents tried to turn off the power to stop him from playing. “Candidly, I think gaming helped me understand crypto a lot better,” Ehrsam said in an interview. “In games there are virtual items and virtual currencies in these games. When you live in the metaverse as a kid, the prospect that everybody might do something like that one day starts to seem a lot less weird.”

After high school, Ehrsam attended Duke University where he earned a B.S. in computer science and economics. After graduation, in 2010, he took a job at Goldman Sachs in New York as a foreign exchange trader. He thought it was the closest thing he could find to playing computer games as a job but he didn’t enjoy it.

It was during this time that he came across Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper and he became obsessed with the concept. Before long, he was trading Bitcoin in the bathroom at work. Ehrsam came across a post on Reddit written by an entrepreneur who had built a prototype for a cryptocurrency platform and was looking for a co-founder. That Reddit user was Brian Armstrong, Ehrsam’s future cofounder.

Fred Ehrsam and Coinbase

By the time Ehrsam met Armstrong, Brian had already started working on an idea for a hosted Bitcoin wallet. He wanted to build something that let people access their money from any device securely, the same way that Gmail gave people access to mail anywhere. He had been a part of the startup incubator Y Combinator, but investors were not interested in his project.

In 2012, Armstrong and Ehrsam connected online. Ehrsam quite his job at Goldman Sachs and moved to San Francisco to help build the business which was operating out of a small apartment.

After asking users for ideas on how to improve the project, they added a feature that allowed users to buy and sell Bitcoin on the platform. Suddenly, they had a flood of customers. In 2013, with just two weeks of capital left, they raised $5 million in Series A funding from Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures. This was followed by a $25 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz. At this point, the company hosted over 600 thousand wallets.

After a while, the company’s mission expanded to “creating an open financial system for the world.” Users could now trade and store Ethereum as well as Bitcoin on the platform.

When @brian_armstrong and I started @coinbase in 2012, a #bitcoin was worth $6 and only known by a few nerds on the internet. #bitcoin was the crazy idea that the world could have a digital money for everyone.@coinbase had one mission: to make crypto easy to use.

— Fred Ehrsam (@FEhrsam) April 14, 2021

In 2017, when it had become clear that Armstrong would be CEO and Ehrsam would remain President, Ehrsam left the company. He felt he was working under a glass ceiling and wanted to be a CEO so he started exploring new ventures. He explained his reasoning in an interview with Bloomberg Technology in 2021, which you can watch below. As of 2025, he remains on the board.

In 2021, the company went public. It is now the largest U.S. crypto exchange with over $404 billion in assets on the platform and a market capitalization of over $40 billion. The platform offers a wide range of cryptocurrencies and related assets to users in 100+ countries. It has played a notable role in making cryptocurrency accessible and mainstream. Brian Armstrong’s net worth is estimated at $8 billion.

Fred Ehrsam and Paradigm

In 2018, after leaving Coinbase, Ehrsam cofounded Paradigm, a venture capital fund that invests in early-stage cryptocurrency startups. He founded the company alongside Matt Huan, a former Sequioa partner. In 2021, the firm raised $2.5 billion, making it the biggest cryptocurrency venture fund ever. In 2024, Bloomberg reported that they were looking to raise a further $850 million for a new fund. Paradigm now has more than $8 billion in assets.

Crypto/Web3 is the most exciting frontier in technology

Thrilled to announce @Paradigm's new $2.5B fundhttps://t.co/MqCYXObMBa

— Matt Huang (@matthuang) November 15, 2021

Paradigm invests between $1 million and $100 million plus in crypto companies, working with startups “from day zero.” Their portfolio includes web3 industry leaders like Chainanalysis (valued at $8.6 billion), OpenSea (valued at $1.4 billion), and Optimism (valued at $1.65 billion). However, Paradigm has made some poor investments as well and lost over $200 million after investing in the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

In 2023, Ehrsam stepped down as managing partner but remains a general partner at the company.

Fred Ehrsam and Nudge

After stepped down at Paradigm, Ehrsam made a shift away from crypto towards biotechnology. In 2024, he co-founded his third company, a biotech company called Nudge, with co-founder Quintin Frerichs.

Ehrsam wrote on x, “We’re building an ultrasound headset to enhance human experience. Press a button to shift your brain state: go to sleep, boost focus, break habits, elevate mood, etc.” Nudge aims to develop the device to treat conditions like addiction and chronic pain. The company launched with 11 engineers and scientists.

Our mission is to develop the best technology for interfacing with the brain to improve people’s lives. pic.twitter.com/ygbki2dsj2

— Nudge (@nudge) April 7, 2025

Ehrsam interest in biotech extends to his portfolio as an angel investor. He invests in startups in areas like longevity and drug discovery and hosts an event for biotech professionals called the Prometheus Summit.

Ehrsam on Crypto & NFTs

Fred Ehrsam is a long-time advocate of cryptocurrency. He has been interested in crypto since Satoshi Nakamoto first published the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008. Ehrsam purchased Bitcoin in the very early days while it was still a fringe investment and believed in it despite persistent skepticism from the world of finance.

Crypto bakes free speech into money, the financial system, and the next generation of the internet

— Fred Ehrsam (@FEhrsam) May 1, 2022

He has described it as “the next internet-sized opportunity for the United States,” arguing that we won’t needs banks and other central institutions in the future. He has also said that crypto could create more jobs than the internet did and solve some of the privacy issues related to big tech.

However, Ehrsam offers a word of caution, arguing that 90% of NFTs and cryptos will worthless in a few years. “There’ll be millions and millions of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets,” he says, “just like there were millions and millions of websites. Most of them won’t work.”

He has also been vocal about crypto regulation in the US, arguing that the US “could get it wrong.”

Imagine if this was a headline from the US government 🥲 pic.twitter.com/oqMxd1biab

— Fred Ehrsam (@FEhrsam) June 29, 2023

Fred Ehrsam Net Worth: The Verdict

Over the course of his long career of entrepreneurship, Fred Ehrsam has built up an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion. One of his biggest sources of income is Coinbase stock, of which he owns 4%. His early interest in cryptocurrency means he may own tens of millions or even billions of dollars in Bitcoin. As a result, his net worth likely fluctuates, tracking the value of Bitcoin and crypto companies.

Ehrsam’s success is a prime example of the value of recognizing innovative projects in emerging industries early. His early investments in Bitcoin, stake in Coinbase, as well as many of Paradigm’s largest startup investments, have been incredibly profitable. His other major source of income is investing, both as the co-founder of the world’s biggest crypto venture fund, Paradigm, and as an angel investor.

Ehrsam is only in his thirties and his reputation as a successful serial entrepreneur and web3 pioneer means he will have no trouble attracting the talent and funding he needs to tackle future ventures. It remains to be seen whether his latest project, Nudge, will be a success but he certainly seems set up for a life of enormous wealth.

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