During the third quarter earnings call at the end of Thursday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that it was “a little distracted,” he talked, because he “was continuing to look at a forecast market on what we say our financial score.” “I just want to weave in the following words or phrase: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Staking, and Web3 before the call ends,” Armstrong added shortly later. Why say all of the ten words in the lack of a sign or willingness?
The CEO’s punchy comment underlined all of those as some of the phrases forecasters wagered will be said during the call in “mention markets” on Kalshi and Polymarket. Thus, by talking about them, Armstrong triggered bets on those words to yield dividends.
While mention markets are relatively niche for prediction markets, a total of $84,000 had been bet on whether certain words would be spoken on the cryptocurrency company’s call, Bloomberg reports. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong may have helped some Kalshi and Polymarket users make a little money, but he was also showing how, when executives learn about these markets, they may easily be manipulated.
In fact, Jeff Dorman, CIO at digital assets investment firm Arca, wrote on X that “spending $84,000 betting on whether a prominent person will mention ‘degen summers’ on an earnings call is greater than ‘meh.’ “You need your head examined if it’s cute or funny or smart that the biggest company’s CEO in this sector openly manipulated a market.” “I wish I had that opportunity as an asset manager,” he added.
According to Dorman, “it’s not fun to have worked 8 years tirelessly trying to convince institutional investors that UIT is a viable asset class and that one of the ‘leaders’ just screwed you over”.
Polymarket, on the other hand, tweeted that Armstrong’s comments were “diabolical work”. Coinbase is branching into backing prediction markets directly via its Everything Exchange, which Armstrong examined on this earnings call, and also funded Kalshi and Polymarket.
A spokesperson for Coinbase stated to Bloomberg that the platform just prohibited staff from utilizing prediction markets or any related activity on the business. As soon as Armstrong’s statements started getting publicity, he stated in an X post, “lol this was fun – it started instantly when anyone from our team copied a link into the chat”.
