Emilie Choi, COO of Coinbase

This episode of The Scoop, The Block's interview podcast hosted by Frank Chaparro, features Emilie Choi, then Coinbase's Vice President of Business and Data, discussing the exchange's growth strategy and data-driven approach to building crypto products. Choi joined Coinbase in 2018 after a career that included leading corporate development at LinkedIn, bringing an operator's background in scaling consumer internet products to one of crypto's most prominent exchanges. 

Read Full Transcript

By mid-2019, Coinbase was pushing further into institutional services through Coinbase Custody, expanding internationally, and steadily growing its listings process to add new assets beyond its original core offerings, all while trying to maintain the trust and regulatory relationships that had become central to its brand. The episode lands during a period when Coinbase was positioning itself as the most compliance-forward major exchange in the United States, a strategy that shaped many of the decisions Choi discusses.

The conversation covers how Choi's team used data to guide decisions on which assets to list, how to prioritize product development, and how to measure the health of the business beyond simple trading volume. She and Chaparro talk through Coinbase's approach to balancing rapid growth with regulatory caution, a tension that defined much of the exchange's public strategy as competitors moved faster on new listings and products. The discussion also touches on Coinbase's efforts to court institutional investors through custody and prime services, the operational challenges of scaling a crypto business across multiple jurisdictions with different regulatory regimes, and how the company thought about competition from both crypto-native exchanges and eventually traditional finance incumbents entering the space.

Choi also shares perspective on building and managing teams inside a fast-growing company navigating both hypergrowth and regulatory scrutiny simultaneously, drawing comparisons to lessons from her time at LinkedIn. The interview offers an inside look at how one of crypto's most influential companies used data and operational discipline to professionalize its business during a formative stretch for the industry.