Coinbase has appointed Anthony Armstrong, former CFO of Elon Musk's xAI and X Corp., to its board of directors and Audit and Compliance Committee. The company announced the move on September 2 and said in an SEC filing that it was effective September 1. The appointment expands Coinbase's board from nine to ten members and places Armstrong in a key governance role as the exchange pushes deeper into multi-asset market infrastructure.
Armstrong spent nearly a decade at Morgan Stanley, eventually becoming vice chairman of investment banking after helping lead its global technology M&A franchise. He later served as a senior adviser at the Department of Government Efficiency before becoming CFO across xAI, X.AI Corp. and X Corp. Reports have highlighted that he advised Elon Musk on the $44 billion Twitter acquisition and later on the roughly $113 billion combination of X and xAI.
Coinbase framed the appointment around operational discipline, saying Armstrong has experience 'building things that work at scale, without waste.' The exchange also confirmed that Anthony Armstrong has no family ties to co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong.
The board change arrives during a difficult financial stretch. COIN closed at $174.96 on September 2, down more than 40% year-over-year. Coinbase reported a $359.5 million loss in Q2 on revenue of $1.2 billion. Subscription and services revenue reached $555.1 million, and the company said 88% of total revenue now comes from operations other than Bitcoin spot trading. Brian Armstrong summarized the pivot by saying Coinbase is 'no longer a bet just on the price of Bitcoin.'
The company is expanding what it calls an 'everything exchange' strategy, including US stock and ETF trading, prediction markets, tokenized assets, pre-IPO perpetual futures, unified liquidity and an SEC-registered AI investment adviser. The competition is shifting toward regulated rails for 24/7 trading, settlement and custody, with traditional exchange operators such as London Stock Exchange Group and Kraken parent Payward also moving into tokenized equities.
