Guest: Emilie Choi, president & COO of Coinbase

After the collapse of FTX in 2022, “the whole industry was tarnished,” recalls Coinbase COO Emilie Choi. “Politicians came out criticizing crypto, saying it was a fraud.”

But unlike FTX, Coinbase was a public company in the U.S. So when the SEC served it a Wells notice, announcing its intent to charge the company with violating securities laws, the executive team took an unusual step: They went on the offensive, publicly calling BS on the agency.

“Well-regarded CEOs from TradFi, they were like, ‘You don’t do that,’” Emilie says. “’You don’t antagonize your regulator.’ ... It was a combination of chutzpah and maybe desperation that we were like, ‘We have to go tell our story, because if we don’t, nobody else will.’”

Chapters:

(01:14) - Working with founder CEOs
(04:12) - Mission first
(07:16) - Reviewing candidates
(09:48) - Unusual hiring
(11:22) - Crypto after FTX
(16:29) - Operation Choke Point 2.0
(19:19) - Grin and bear it
(21:24) - Channeling negativity
(24:21) - Going to war with the SEC
(26:20) - Donald Trump and Gary Gensler
(28:38) - Was it worth it?
(31:19) - Shipping challenges
(34:03) - OKRs and personal goals
(36:41) - Brian Armstrong and structure
(40:56) - The COO guidebook
(43:30) - Removing bureaucracy
(46:50) - Investing in crypto
(49:41) - After Coinbase
(53:03) - Constantly on
(54:53) - Favorite interview questions
(56:28) - Who Coinbase is hiring
(58:28) - Standing for something

Mentioned in this episode: Google Chat, executive coaches, Mark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, speed reading, Warner Bros., Elizabeth Warren, Sam Bankman-Fried, Wells notices, Paul Grewal, Chris Lehane, Airbnb, OpenAI, FOIA requests, Balaji Srinivasan, Dan Romero, Kevin Scott, Microsoft, Patrick McHenry, Ritchie Torres, Fairshake PAC, A16z, Ripple, Stand With Crypto, Dogecoin, Robinhood, Charles Schwab, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Paul Ryan, Faryar Shirzad, Kara Calvert, Elon Musk, Earn.com, Ben Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Claire Hughes Johnson and Scaling People, Directly Responsible Individuals, Fidelity, BlackRock, Yahoo!, Stewart Butterfield, Brad Garlinghouse, Alibaba, Flickr, cognitive tests, and Loom.

Links:

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This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

#226 President & COO Coinbase, Emilie Choi: Through the Storm

Grit