Coinbase is the largest online crypto exchange in America where people can securely buy, sell, transfer and even store their digital currencies. Currently, they only broker exchanges of Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin with fiat currencies in about 32 different countries.
Concurrently, since 2014 Coinbase started offering services to institutional Wall Street firms through its GADX exchange and aimed towards achieving more institutional business in crypto, with GADX at its core. GADX is Coinbase’s institutional trading platform working with the sole purpose of alluring in more clients from the New York Stock Exchange.
Furthermore, in attempts to expand its business, Coinbase is launching Coinbase Custodian which promises to offer the same level of security as provided by custody banks. But, in order to rack in more users, they are also offering additional services such as a dedicated account representative with phone support, multi-user account support with separate permissions, and even insurance - although restricted to some special cases. However, it is only made available to Coinbase users having more than $10million in deposits.
Now to get their boat sailing and compete with the big guns, Coinbase has their eyes set on hiring professionals working on Wall Street. The company has just hired Christine Sandler, who used to be an executive at the New York Stock Exchange and will now be the new Director of Institutional Sales at Coinbase. Sandler also has experience working at Barclays where she was a Managing Director till 2016.
Besides Sandler, the San Francisco based crypto exchange has also recently acquired Eric Scro to be their Vice President of finance. Previously, Scro used to work at the New York Stock Exchange as the Head of Finance.
It seems that Wall Street is the sweet spot for Coinbase as they search for top-level executives who can help them fulfill their vision. However, besides Wall Street, the company has also hired Asiff Hirji form Ameritrade and assigned him as their Chief Operating Officer.
Dan Romero, Coinbase General Manager, states, “The company is scaling up to meet future demands from the institutional market, and we are looking to hire a bunch of different executives at the company. […] We are also looking forward to double our staff numbers from 250 to 500 in 2018.”