Coinbase Global, Inc. is a public company owned by its shareholders, but co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong controls it: he beneficially owned 62.5% of the Class B stock and 49.6% of total voting power as of March 31, 2026, according to the company's 2026 proxy statement (DEF 14A, filed April 24, 2026). Trusts he established with an independent trustee held another 18.9% of the vote in the same filing.
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That split between economic ownership and voting control is the whole story. Armstrong's Class A position is small, but each Class B share carries twenty votes. This page walks through the share classes, the largest holders named in SEC filings, and how the numbers are measured. Sibling pages cover who owns Circle, who owns Kraken and who owns Binance.
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Coinbase is owned by public shareholders who hold its publicly traded Class A stock, plus a small group of insiders who hold high-vote Class B stock. Brian Armstrong is the controlling holder. Institutions such as BlackRock own large Class A positions, but Class B voting power keeps effective control with Armstrong and trusts tied to him.
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The April 2026 proxy bases its percentages on 222,377,223 Class A shares and 41,033,891 Class B shares outstanding as of March 31, 2026. In other words, Class B is a small minority of the share count but, at twenty votes a share, carries most of the vote.
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Coinbase itself has a long corporate history. The company's 2025 annual report (10-K, filed February 12, 2026) states that Coinbase, Inc. was founded in 2012, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Coinbase Global in April 2014, and that the parent reincorporated from Delaware to Texas on December 15, 2025.
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Brian Armstrong owns a small slice of Coinbase's Class A stock and most of its twenty-vote Class B stock. That Class B position gives him close to half the total vote on his own. Most of his Class A figure is options, not shares held outright.
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Per the 2026 proxy, he beneficially owned about 8.2 million Class A shares (3.5% of that class) and about 25.6 million Class B shares (62.5% of that class) as of March 31, 2026. Those holdings gave him 49.6% of total voting power, per the same filing.
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Footnote 4 of the 2026 proxy breaks the position down. It lists 8,167,446 shares underlying exercisable Class A options, 526 Class A shares and 22,681,225 Class B shares in The Brian Armstrong Living Trust, and 2,958,393 Class B shares in The Ehrsam 2014 Irrevocable Trust, of which Armstrong is trustee. That last item matters: shares can count toward a person's beneficial ownership because they hold the vote as trustee, even when the economic benefit sits elsewhere.
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Separately, the same filing lists "entities affiliated with and trusts established by Brian Armstrong with Independent Trustee" holding 9,865,967 Class B shares, or 24.0% of the class and 18.9% of the vote. Footnote 3 says those shares sit in five 2025 trusts and LLCs whose trustee is Jeffrey Billings. The 10-K describes Armstrong and that independent trustee together as able to exercise a majority of the voting power.
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Coinbase has two voting classes. Class A shares trade publicly and carry one vote each. Class B shares are held by insiders and carry twenty votes each. Both vote together as a single class on most matters, so a modest Class B stake can outweigh a much larger Class A holding in director elections and major transactions.
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Footnote 1 of the 2026 proxy sets out the twenty-to-one ratio. The 10-K risk factors spell out the consequence: Armstrong's voting position gives him the ability to influence director elections, charter amendments and any merger or sale of substantially all assets that needs shareholder approval.
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The mechanics are easiest to see as a flow.
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Figures in the diagram come from the beneficial ownership table in the April 24, 2026 DEF 14A, measured as of March 31, 2026.
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The largest holders named in Coinbase's 2026 proxy are Brian Armstrong, trusts he set up with an independent trustee, Fred Ehrsam, and BlackRock. BlackRock is the only institution among the major Class A holders in that table. Several directors, including Marc Andreessen and Fred Wilson, hold small Class A positions.
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The BlackRock row deserves a caveat. Footnote 2 of the proxy says it relies solely on a Schedule 13G/A filed July 16, 2025, reporting holdings as of June 30, 2025. Institutional positions move daily, so the figure is a snapshot of a snapshot.
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Yes. Fred Ehrsam, one of the original Coinbase team and a longtime director, still holds Class B stock through his living trust, which makes him one of Coinbase's larger voting holders.
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Per the 2026 proxy, Ehrsam beneficially owned 5,511,848 Class B shares as of March 31, 2026, equal to 13.4% of Class B and 10.6% of total voting power in the same table. The proxy biography identifies Ehrsam as a Coinbase co-founder and a director since March 2013, and as a co-founder of Paradigm, a crypto-focused investment firm. His director seat plus his Class B stake make him the second-largest individual voting holder after Armstrong in that filing.
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No venture firm appears among the major holders in Coinbase's 2026 proxy table. Board members with venture ties, such as Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz and Fred Wilson, are listed with small Class A holdings, which gives them board influence but no controlling vote.
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The 2026 proxy lists Andreessen with 1,151,418 Class A shares and Wilson with 262,457 Class A shares, and notes Andreessen has been a director since December 2020. Shopify founder Tobias Lütke, also a director, is listed with 222,315 Class A shares. Each is below 1% of Class A, and none of these holders own Class B stock according to the table.
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Beneficial ownership figures have real limits, and readers comparing numbers across sites should know them. The table is a dated snapshot, it counts some options as owned, and it can credit a trustee with shares whose economic value belongs to someone else. Three specific caveats follow for anyone relying on these Coinbase numbers.
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First, SEC beneficial ownership counts options exercisable within 60 days as owned by the holder but not by anyone else, so percentages do not sum neatly. The proxy says this directly. Second, the table is dated March 31, 2026, and Armstrong's holdings can change through sales, gifts to trusts, or option exercises reported later on Form 4. Third, a trustee can be counted as a beneficial owner of shares whose economic value belongs to someone else, which is why the Ehrsam 2014 trust appears inside Armstrong's number.
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Yes. Coinbase Global's Class A common stock is publicly traded and Class B is held by insiders, per the 2025 10-K.
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Not of the shares. He held 49.6% of the vote on his own as of March 31, 2026, and the proxy shows his independent-trustee trusts held another 18.9%.
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Twenty votes per share, versus one for Class A, according to the 2026 proxy.
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The 2026 proxy lists 14,618,089 Class A shares, 6.6% of the class and 1.4% of voting power, based on a 13G/A reporting June 30, 2025 holdings.
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Texas, following a reincorporation from Delaware effective December 15, 2025, per the 10-K.
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Every ownership figure on this page comes from Coinbase's own SEC filings, fetched directly from EDGAR. No percentages were taken from news coverage or data aggregators, and no figure was estimated or recalculated. Where a filing relies on an older third-party report, such as a Schedule 13G, the text says so.