Name: Catching Up with Coinbase President and COO Emilie Choi
Uploaded: 2021-10-25
Duration: 4 min 12 s
Description: Coinbase president and COO Emilie Choi discusses the company's apolitical culture, its recently proposed regulatory framework, and more.

Coinbase president and COO Emilie Choi discusses the company's apolitical culture, its recently proposed regulatory framework, and more.

Catching Up with Coinbase President and COO Emilie Choi

The_Ledger

It’s been a year since CEO Brian Armstrong posted a controversial blog on the company culture.

Coinbase’s Emily Choi on ‘apolitical culture,’ and more

mm hmm, mm hmm. Mhm. We believe that there should be clarity about one agency regulating crypto. We believe that that agency, whatever it is, should probably be kind of helping shepherd the life cycle of the crypto activities that could happen under under its fold. We have more than 50 regulators just in the US alone. And so we're just trying to figure out a regulatory scheme that works for both regulators as well as for the crypto industry. We'll see how it lands you think it's a very fair kind of proposal. And the whole reason that we did this in the first place is because you know, brian and others would go to D. C. And you know, people would say, well what like what's the proposal like what what actually what framework would work for regulating crypto? We actually proposed a digital asset regulatory framework years ago. And actually most of the exchanges including Coinbase abide by it. And through that test we can kind of say whether or not we deemed something of security or utility. So we think that there's actually a good structure for that right now. Um and hopefully that doesn't keep getting re litigated administration to administration. I think that's part of the pain that we're experiencing is we we went public through the sec and so we think that, you know, the tokens that are on our platform all passed that test a year ago, brian tends a blog. And the whole point of it was that we want a political culture and we want to be clear about that with anybody who's going to come into the company and anybody who's already at the company and to be honest with you, I think it's the best thing we've ever done as a company. It feels like we're being so transparent about who we are and that we are missing. First. We did lose 5% of our employees at that time. And I think just about any of them would have told you that they left on great terms. They felt like they were treated really well because we had an understanding about what this was and we had clarity about it when you're building a company, you have to kind of start setting cultural norms and expectations early on because if you let things get out of control than at 100,000 employees, it's much harder to, to reset and to send that type of a message when you're at 1000 people, it's much easier. And so yes, it was hard to lose those folks. But it was actually super clarifying moment for us and we feel like now whenever any employee comes in the door or any employees at the company, they just know what we're about. And that is being about the mission. Mhm Yeah. The way that we look at our business is that we have largely a transactional business model today, that transactional business model helps us fuel and invest in new lines of business. And so it's this incredible machine. If you think about google search back in the day and then it was able to use that profit to invest in things like Youtube and android and other things and so we think about it exactly the same way so trading is that core. But we're building on top of that with much more predictable revenue streams including staking assets under custody, we have A S. A. P. C. And those are more fast like revenue streams whether or not we would ever get into like more traditional securities. It's funny because this is a brian Armstrong thing. He's always like when other zig zag and I think that we've built a company predicated upon crypto. There is so much to do just in crypto and so we feel really comfortable with our position focused exclusively on crypto. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. We employ a number of different diversity practices including the Rooney rule which is that for any senior level position you're going to make sure that you interview at least one woman or person of color for that role as well to make sure that they were in the consideration set. Um In fact I think I may have been hired because of Rooney rule and it wasn't because I was a woman, it was because I was included in the consideration set for my role and when brian I met we just we clicked and we felt like there was a big fit there. So I think those types of systems can work and we're actually really happy about the very thriving female employee basic point based Oh!