Brian Armstrong, the 38-year-old, bald-headed brainbox behind cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, gave himself a Christmas present this year: an immense property in LA’s Bel Air. The price was a cool $133 million (£97 million). He’s unlikely to miss it. Armstrong’s net worth shot to an estimated $9.4 billion after Coinbase’s 2021 stock market float.
The one-time Airbnb software engineer is not the only person to have come into sudden, vast wealth lately. In the crypto world, such stories are de rigueur.
Consider Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer. Two years ago, the New York thirtysomethings were running a marketplace for non-fungible tokens, the unique digital assets known as NFTs. It was generating less than $30,000 a month in sales. Then the world fell in love with high-priced
