Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong takes a spin on prediction markets

On Thursday, at the end of Coinbase’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Brian Armstrong admitted that he was “a little distracted,” because he was “tracking the prediction market on what Coinbase is going to say on their next earnings call.”

“And I just want to add in here the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Staking, and Web3 to make sure we get those in before the end of the call,” Armstrong added.

Why divulge those without any clear context? As Armstrong alluded to, these were words that users on the “mentioned markets” bet on Kalshi and Polymarket would be spoken during the call. By speaking the words, Armstrong was allowing some of those bets to pay off.

Bloomberg reports that while the markets mentioned are still a relatively niche part of prediction markets, a total of $84,000 was bet on whether certain words would be uttered on the cryptocurrency company’s call. While Armstrong may have helped some Kalshi and Polymarket users make a little money, he was also demonstrating how easy it is to manipulate these markets when executives become aware of them.

In fact, Jeff Dorman, CIO of digital asset investment firm Arca, wrote on

“It’s no fun working tirelessly for 8 years trying to educate institutional investors about the value of investing in cryptocurrencies as an investable asset class, and working to help them gain comfort in the industry, while one of the supposed ‘leaders’ publicly mocks the industry with foolishness like that,” Dorman said.

Meanwhile, Polymarket posted that Armstrong’s comments were a “diabolical act.”

Coinbase is moving to support prediction markets itself through the Everything Exchange, which Armstrong touted on the earnings call, and the company has also invested in Kalshi and Polymarket. A Coinbase spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company prohibits employees from participating in prediction markets or related activities around the company.

After Armstrong’s remarks began to attract attention, he wrote on X, “This was fun – it happened spontaneously when one of our team members dropped a link in the chat.”