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If the mission is to create economic freedom for Coinbase's CEO, he's taking all the right steps.
You can tell from Brian Armstrongâs opening words that heâs a numbers guy.
âThere have been a lot of difficult events in the world this year,â understated the Coinbase CEO in announcing that forthwith, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States would do a better job of ignoring them.
According to Armstrongâs recent blog post, Coinbaseâs mission is to âcreate an open financial system for the worldâ. He left out the second half of the companyâs mission statement, the part about being âthe leading global brand for helping people convert digital currency into and out of their local currency,â which doesnât convey the nobility of his purpose as clearly, but does specify the source of his profits.
And itâs really that part we should be focusing on, not the âeconomic freedomâ that he describes as central to Coinbaseâs purpose. Because Armstrong doesnât address economic freedom in his letter. He doesnât discuss why it is important, or why thereâs a need for it, or who is suffering from a lack of it.
Armstrongâs âmission focusedâ missive, which commits the company to apoliticization, conveniently overlooks the fact that economic freedom is a political and human issue. Proscribed activities at Coinbase now include debating âcauses or political candidates internallyâ and taking on âactivism outside of our core mission at work.â
Taken in conjunction with the email he subsequently sent to employees in which he offered severance packages worth between four and six monthsâ pay to those who agreed that âlife is too short to work at a company you arenât excited aboutâ, Armstrongâs posturing on the subject of non-posturing appears to be nothing more than a love letter to stakeholders in a potential IPO, complete with a rich dowry â the excision of dissent from Coinbaseâs body politic.
A direct listing for the $8 billion-valued Coinbase has been the subject of speculation within the industry, and that was also the vehicle chosen by Palantir to âcement billionaire fortunesâ for co-founder Peter Thiel and CEO Alexander Karp. In a direct listing, shareholders sell directly to buyers and avoid lockups. And how crypto is that?
Itâs surely no coincidence that Armstrongâs email to employees was penned just a couple of weeks after Karp told investors, ahead of his own IPO, that if they want to change the client base or culture they should âpick a different companyâ.
Karp, not incidentally, has also stated that Silicon Valleyâs âengineering elite⊠may know more than most about building software. But they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires.â
Itâs almost as though Armstrong were reading the Palantir IPO playbook.
Microsoft president Brad Smith is on record this year as saying that "I donât think our employees are naive. I think sometimes they are idealistic. I think the world needs a combination of idealism and pragmatism." But heâs one of a diminishing number of tech executives who seem to be comfortable with the notion that employees donât want to check their beliefs at the entrance to the âplex or the Park.
Earlier this year Google fired four employees that it described as âengaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data-security policies.â All four had, coincidentally, denounced the companyâs treatment of its workers, and were uncomfortable with the companyâs relationships with certain government customers.
At Salesforce, employees protested the companyâs relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Amazon employees railed against selling facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies. Even Google relented in the face of employee opposition to using AI technology on a drone strike project.
Itâs clear that despite the extraordinarily employer-centric nature of American labor laws â which essentially offer carte blanche to employers to fire anyone, anytime, for any reason other than discrimination â Big Tech is facing a reckoning internally as well as externally.
And itâs into this morass that Armstrong has waded, tepidly wielding a commitment to create an anodyne workplace bereft of political discourse that will surely thrill potential investors in Coinbaseâs will-they-wonât-they IPO.
There was a time when Googleâs motto was âDonât be evil.â It was a simple, elegant exhortation that helped align the company with the motivations and beliefs of its employees, customers, and yes, even investors. Evil may not have been defined, but that was part of the beauty of the sentiment. It deferred to the sense of righteousness that exists in each of us who choose to work within a âmission focusedâ organization.
Today that motto is âDo the right thing.â Tell me that isnât doublespeak for âWeâll decide whatâs right, and you can tag along.â
Creating an open financial system for the world is why many of us are involved in the digital asset industry. But our missions, plural, do not exist in a vacuum. And while there is plenty of self-serving in the crypto industry, the opportunity to rectify inequities appeals to many.
Some of us interpret the âeconomic freedomâ enabled by cryptocurrency as an opportunity to escape centralized authority, or to dodge the surveillance capitalists. Some of us see economic freedom as providing a financial infrastructure to the less advantaged citizens of our planet. Some see it as a personal message, a chance to secure our own economic freedom through investment opportunities that are more inclusive than the Cantillon Effect-perpetuating Accredited Investor rules.
However we see it, economic freedom is an inherently political issue. Try as Armstrong might, it cannot be extricated from its historical context and neatly packaged up as a marketing slogan.
Or maybe it can. After all, Palantir lists three guiding ideas on its website, including âKeep focused on the mission," which isn't a million miles from Armstrong's twice-mentioned "laser focus on the mission."
You donât need a B.A. in Economics to see where this is going.
Cointelegraph is interested in hearing the stories of Coinbase employees and their reaction to Mr. Armstrong's letter. Please feel free to contact us in confidence via email at editor@cointelegraph.com or DM our Editor in Chief on Twitter, @JonRiceCrypto
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