Coinbase’s Institutional Platform Head Leaves Firm After Five Years

Leading U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase has announced that veteran employee Adam White, head of its institutional platform group, is leaving the firm, Bloomberg reported October 4.

Adam White was reportedly Coinbase’s fifth-ever employee, joining “in 2013 when the founders were still working out of a one-bedroom apartment and Bitcoin was trading around $200,” as Bloomberg notes. Prior to his work at Coinbase, he reportedly served in the U.S. Air Force and received an MBA from Harvard Business School.

For his most recent post, White served as Coinbase’s vice president and general manager of the institutional business. As of spring 2018, the exchange has been rolling out a series of products targeted at major institutional clients – including custodian services and an Index Fund – which Coinbase considers could “unlock $10 billion of institutional investor money sitting on the sideline.”   

While White reportedly declined to comment on his departure, a company spokesperson told Bloomberg that:

“While we’re extremely sad to see him go, we’re also confident in that group’s ability to keep executing on the vision that he laid out to be the most trusted venue for institutional investors to trade cryptocurrencies.”

CEO Brian Armstrong gave his comment, saying:

“Over the past five years, Adam helped us build our exchange business into the largest U.S.-based crypto-trading venue, and was integral to growing Coinbase’s global presence and scaling our culture to multiple offices.”

Coinbase announced Oct. 3 that Jonathan Kellner, former chief executive officer of Instinet, is joining as a managing director of the exchange’s institutional business.

There has been a wave of new talent joining the San Francisco-based exchange, which recent reports have suggested could soon be valued at $8 billion. This week, Coinbase announced that Chris Dodds, a member of the board at Charles Schwab, would be joining the exchange’s board.

In late September, the company hired former Fannie Mae General Counsel Brian Brooks as its new Chief Legal Officer; former Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft employee Tim Wagner also joined Coinbase as vice president of engineering this summer.