Whether signing with the Warriors in 2016 or investing in various companies, Kevin Durant has a reputation for spotting opportunities, whether on or off the court. But what might be his most remarkable example of early recognition isn’t in a portfolio or a sneaker deal. It’s buried behind a lost password.
Recently, Durant and his agent, Rich Kleiman, were speakers at Game Plan 2025, where he spoke about his media startup 35V and other investments. During this segment, Kleiman brought up a story from 2015, right after Durant had started playing for Golden State, when investor Ben Horowitz had hosted a birthday party for Durant, where the whole Warriors team was present. However, Durant and Kleiman kept hearing one buzzword, which caught their attention.
“At the end of that night, I was like, ‘Kevin, I just heard the word Bitcoin 25 times this evening,’” Kleiman said, in front of the audience. “The next day we started investing in Bitcoin and, fortunately, we’ve yet to be able to track down his Coinbase account info, we’ve never sold anything, and his Bitcoin is just through the roof.”
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But what sounds like a stroke of luck is actually more complicated. Like Kleiman admitted, neither he nor Durant can access the account where the Bitcoin is stored. This odd situation means that despite the exponential growth that Bitcoin has experienced, it is now behind a vault that they can’t crack. “There’s just a process we haven’t been able to figure out,” Kleiman said. “But bitcoin keeps going up, so it’s like, ‘What’s the problem?’”
For Kleiman, the funds being locked away are not what he’s worried about, but just how long the situation has dragged on.
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When pressed on stage by the host about whether they had been trying all this time, he admitted that it had been years without any progress. The ordeal started at that Warriors dinner has now resulted in Durant effectively becoming an accidental long-term holder, with no option but to ride the waves of the market.
Kevin Durant’s Coinbase Ties Add a Twist to the Story
The irony runs deeper for Kevin Durant, considering he has a deep business relationship with Coinbase. In 2017, Thirty Five Ventures (35V) joined a round of funding for the Bitcoin exchange, and he later partnered with them for promotional campaigns. He has since become one of the faces of the brand, which has just made his predicament more striking: The face of Coinbase can’t access his own Coinbase account.
This partnership isn’t just symbolic. Boardroom, a company founded by Durant and Kleiman, reported that Coinbase is a sponsor, and the tie showed off the intersection between finance, media, and sports. Durant has also previously framed crypto as the future of athlete investment, saying that athletes should diversify their portfolios with digital assets. To hear his agent admit that they’ve spent years trying to recover his account password highlights one of the most overlooked problems with crypto ownership – losing access to an account can mean losing millions.
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Other athletes have also had their own encounters with crypto. Before it collapsed, Tom Brady was a brand ambassador for FTX, and Odell Beckham Jr. famously took his salary from the Rams in Bitcoin. But Durant’s stake isn’t just a marketing stunt, but a safe of assets that continue to rise in value. The tension between his public role as a Coinbase partner and his issues with accessing his funds makes his story a unique – and human – crossover in the worlds of sports and cryptocurrency.