Kings of Crypto

15

Power Struggle

Balaji Srinivasan crumbled a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie into a bowl, reached for another from the package and crumbled that up, too. Then a third. He took a carton of half-and-half from the fridge, poured it over the crumbs, and began to eat. It was 1:30 in the morning in June of 2018. Balaji looked into the San Francisco night.

Market Street lay enveloped in the uneasy stillness that wraps around a financial district after its daytime energy is drained. The city slept, but Balaji was wide awake. He munched on his bowl of Tate’s and half-and-half and thought about crypto.

It had been four years since he had turned up in grubby sweatpants at Coinbase’s old Bluxome Street office and expounded on the theories of political economist ...