On Thursday, at the end of Coinbase's third-quarter earnings call, CEO Brian Armstrong admitted he was “a little bit distracted” because he was “following the prediction market of what Coinbase will say on its next earnings call.”
“And I would like to add the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Staking, Web3 here just to make sure you understand before the call ends,” Armstrong added.
Why blurt them out without clear context? As Mr. Armstrong hinted, these were the words that Kalsi and Polimarket's Mention Market users were betting would be spoken on the phone. In other words, by speaking, Mr. Armstrong allowed some of that gamble to pay off.
Bloomberg reports that while the mention market remains a relatively niche part of the prediction market, a total of $84,000 was bet on whether certain words would be said on a crypto company phone call. And while Mr. Armstrong may have helped some Calsi and Polymarket users make a little money, he also illustrated how easily these markets can be manipulated by executives once they become aware of them.
In fact, Jeff Dorman, chief information officer at digital asset investment firm Arca, wrote in X: “If you think it's cute, smart, or shrewd that the CEO of the industry's largest company openly manipulated the market, you need to take a hard look at your head.”
“After eight years of working tirelessly to educate institutional investors about the value of crypto investing as an investable asset class and help them feel comfortable in the industry, it’s not fun for one of our supposed ‘leaders’ to publicly ridicule the industry with nonsense like this,” Dorman said.
Meanwhile, Polymarket posted that Armstrong's comments were “the work of the devil.”
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Coinbase has moved to support prediction markets itself through Everything Exchange, which Armstrong touted on the earnings call, and has also invested in Kalshi and Polymarket. A Coinbase spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company prohibits its employees from participating in prediction markets or related activities within the company.
After Armstrong's remarks started gaining traction, Armstrong wrote to X, “Lol, this was fun. It happened spontaneously when someone on the team dropped a link in the chat.”