Coinbase hires Emilie Choi, who did 40+ deals during her tenure as head of M&A at LinkedIn, as its VP of corporate and business development
A cryptocurrency company could do some fairly outside-the-box acquisitions. — Coinbase, the cryptocurrency trading platform …
Context & Ripple Effects
Coinbase is staffing up like a mature tech company rather than a crypto startup: within weeks it has pulled in a VP of Operations and Technology from Twitter (Tina Bhatnagar) and an NYSE finance head (Eric Scro). Choi's hire adds the missing piece — a corporate development function run by someone who executed 40+ deals at LinkedIn.
The timing matters because Coinbase's first real acquisition was already in motion; the Earn.com deal, reported at $120M+ with CEO Balaji Srinivasan joining as CTO, landed about six weeks after Choi arrived.
First-order effects
- Coinbase gains an in-house M&A operator for the first time, giving its acquisition pipeline — starting with Earn.com — a dedicated executive owner rather than ad-hoc dealmaking.
Second-order effects
- The hire signals to founders and rivals that Coinbase will buy products and teams outright, pushing competitors like other exchanges to build their own corp dev functions or risk losing acqui-hire targets.
Third-order effects
- Choi's trajectory validates the bet: by mid-2019 she was promoted to COO over departing Asiff Hirji amid an executive exodus (replacing him directly), showing the M&A hire became a succession path — a pattern where dealmakers rise to run crypto companies as they professionalize.
The trend: Crypto exchanges are adopting Silicon Valley's build-via-acquisition playbook, hiring veteran M&A executives from established tech firms to convert trading-platform cash into product diversification.