Emilie Choi #9

President and chief operating officer at Coinbase

Emilie Choi & President and chief operating officer at Coinbase & background` Emilie Choi & President and chief operating officer at Coinbase & poster`
Emilie Choi & President and chief operating officer at Coinbase
Category Exchange
person-quote
This was definitely a breakout year for crypto, and it was cool to see how everything evolved. [...] Being the first major crypto company to go public was a watershed event for the whole community.

Biography: 

Emilie Choi is an American entrepreneur best known in crypto for her long-standing role running one of the biggest crypto exchanges, Coinbase. She joined Coinbase in early 2018 as the vice president of business and data before gradually moving up the ranks to become the exchange’s president and chief operating officer. Based in San Jose, California, Choi is an economics graduate from Johns Hopkins University and holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Prior to helping build the Coinbase exchange alongside CEO Brian Armstrong, Choi has taken up key leadership roles with numerous industry giants including Warner Bros, LinkedIn, Yahoo and Naspers.

Choi is also an angel investor who has participated in a number of seed and Series A and B funding rounds for various financial organizations. In addition to cryptocurrency, some of her primary business interests include consumer internet, software as a service, mergers and acquisitions, venture investments, corporate strategy, business operations, business development and data analytics.

Choi’s 2021:

A major portion of Choi’s time in 2021 was dedicated to helping Coinbase overcome the numerous regulatory hurdles put forth by the United States Congress and Securities and Exchange Commission. Despite the hitch, Coinbase maintained a consistent growth trajectory through various acquisitions, partnerships, product launches, nonfungible token involvement, extended wallet support and international expansion.

The year also marked a historic significance for Coinbase, as the crypto exchange overtook social media giant TikTok as the most popular app in Apple’s App Store. By the middle of the year, Coinbase made its breakthrough debut with a direct listing on Nasdaq under Choi’s leadership. Supporting Armstrong’s cause for crypto mainstream adoption, Choi also onboarded an arsenal of top executives, including former White House adviser Faryar Shirzad, Google Pay engineering lead Pankaj Gupta and Facebook’s (now Meta) global head of brand Kate Rouch.

Moreover, the company bagged a series of crypto-focused acquisitions, including crypto exchange data aggregator Zabo and wallet provider BRD. As the year ended, Armstrong, Choi and their team of Coinbase executives proposed a Digital Asset Policy, which calls for a separate framework for regulating crypto and digital assets. 

Choi’s 2022:

Stepping into the new year, Coinbase seems well-positioned to remain at the forefront for attaining regulatory clarity on cryptocurrencies in the United States. In addition, the Nasdaq-listed company will likely continue laying down its roots in offshore jurisdictions.

If history is to repeat itself, Coinbase executives including Armstrong and Choi will play a key role in regulatory discussions around crypto that will ripple across the globe. Envisioning a global network of smaller offices, Coinbase will close down its San Francisco headquarters and move toward a decentralized remote-work environment.

Resonating strong support for the nonfungible token space, Coinbase’s NFT offering is expected to blow up, with the platform waitlist receiving 1 million signups prior to launch. In the long term, Choi shows no sign of slowing down the global acquisition spree that is helping Coinbase reach out to new demographics and locations.