Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky told CNBC that he is “very proud” of what one of the company’s first software engineers has achieved since he left the online home rental market.
That former Airbnb employee is Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase. The cryptocurrency exchange went public and skyrocketed on a direct list on Wednesday, a milestone for the growing digital asset industry.
“Brian is one of the original architects of our payment platform and our fraud detection system. So I’m very proud of what he’s doing,” Chesky said in an interview aired Friday on Tech Check.
San Francisco-based Airbnb, which had its own IPO in December, was founded in 2008. Armstrong worked for the company for just over a year. Shortly after his departure in 2012, Armstrong started Coinbase along with Fred Ehrsam, a former Goldman Sachs forex trader.
Chesky said he “keeps in touch” with Armstrong.
At the time of Coinbase’s founding, Bitcoin was only three years old and priced at about $ 6. Ehrsam continues to serve on Coinbase’s board of directors, but took a step back from his day-to-day work in 2017. He is now a managing partner at Paradigm, a cryptocurrency-focused investment firm that helped get him started.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as Ether, have been in tears in recent months.
One of the factors cited for the rise in Bitcoin prices, which went from less than $ 11,000 in early October to more than $ 61,000 as of Friday, has been institutional adoption. Bitcoin, which accounts for more than half of the $ 2 trillion cryptocurrency market, hit an all-time high of about $ 65,000 on Wednesday.
Two major Wall Street banks – Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs – are taking steps to provide wealth management customers with exposure to bitcoin and companies like Tesla have bought digital currency with cash on their balance sheets. The electric vehicle manufacturer also began accepting Bitcoin as payment for its products.
Billionaire real estate firm Rick Caruso has also recently invested in bitcoins and will begin allowing tenants of its residential and retail properties to pay rent using the world’s largest cryptocurrency for market value.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase (L), and Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb.
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Asked by CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa if Airbnb has any plans related to adopting cryptography, Chesky said he had “nothing to announce right now. But I can tell you for sure we’ve been watching it.”
Chesky spoke fondly of bitcoin, however, as well as the role Armstrong’s Coinbase has played in creating a security-focused cryptocurrency exchange.
“I think one of the lessons here is when it empowers people, which provides more economic empowerment and more access,” Chesky said. “But to get more power to people, people need to be able to trust each other.”
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are based on blockchain technology, a decentralized digital book in which transactions are recorded. Proponents expect the adoption of the blockchain to grow in the coming years, and some people compare its disruptive potential to being similar to the early days of the internet.
“Viously, obviously, cryptocurrencies have their own trust system. Airbnb, our trust system based on our reputation system, I think has been able to unlock a lot of economic aspects,” Chesky said. “Therefore, I believe that these general trends in unlocking trust systems that allow more people to participate in the economy is a great benefit to the global economy.”
Shares of Coinbase rose about 5% on Friday to about $ 340 per share, about $ 12 above, where it closed its debut session two days ago. Coinbase’s market cap stands at nearly $ 67 billion.
Since it closed 112% in its IPO debut late last year, Airbnb shares have gained around 20%. The shares traded around $ 177 on Friday, giving Airbnb a market capitalization of more than $ 106 billion.
Airbnb’s business is benefiting from the recovery following a Covid pandemic-induced slowdown. Chesky told CNBC that the company believes it will “need millions more hosts” in the coming years to keep pace. It currently has 4 million hosts.