9

Brian Has aMaster Plan

Brian breathed a sigh of satisfaction as he clicked on “publish” and his blog post went live. It was September of 2016, a month after the Bitfinex hack, and he was wearing a plain black T-shirt. Like other Silicon Valley CEOs, he had taken on a distinct sartorial style as a type of self-branding. Brian’s style wasn’t as conspicuous as Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie or Steve Jobs’s turtleneck—an affect later copied by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Instead, Brian took to donning a simple T-shirt—usually black, sometimes white—for speeches and public appearances. It was a nod to simplicity and focus.

Since founding Coinbase, Brian had kept his blog as a chronicle of product announcements, ...

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