Davos 2024: Coinbase CFO Haas on Bitcoin, Crypto Regulation

Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas says the Bitcoin ETF approval is a “wonderful step forward bringing crypto to mainstream.” She speaks on Bloomberg Television at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
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Everyone was talking about ETFs and Bitcoin. Last week it was quite exciting to see it approved, although the SCC said, look, this is not a value judgment. The fact that it’s approved, do you see momentum from this being quite a game changer? Absolutely. This was a landmark day for crypto.

This really brings Bitcoin into a much broader investable asset class for trillions of dollars of assets previously RIAs many wealth managers pensions couldn’t access spot crypto and this gives them a vehicle. It gives them a very familiar wrapper that they can now access through the

Traditional securities markets. So we think this is a wonderful step forward, bringing crypto to mainstream and bringing our goal of bringing crypto to a billion people around the world. So have you seen an uplift? Have you seen momentum from last week? Have you had. We’ve definitely seen dollars flow into the ETFs.

What I’m so proud of is the markets have been stable though This was a long anticipated transition and we’re starting to see the gradual growth that we expected. What does it mean for hiring, for example? Are you hiring more people?

If you look at Coinbase in the next 12 months, where are you hiring and to what purpose? You know, we have been really happy with our headcount over the last year. We are being incredibly efficient. What we saw last year is we brought our cost down meaningfully, but our product

Expansion grew tremendously. We introduced base layer two, blockchain. We grew derivatives both in the US and outside the US. We introduced the international exchange and we launched in many countries around the world. So we are seeing growth in efficiency. We’re going to be adding headcount in

2024, but it will be all in pursuit of our roadmap. So growing internationally, continuing to expand to our retail and our institutional customers. And in regions particular that you’re looking at, are you, for example, moving some of your US based employees outside the US elsewhere? No.

This will be net new hiring in new local markets. What are you most excited about in the next 12 months? You know, crypto exchanges have had a bit of a wild ride over the last 18 months. Are you expecting stability or are you

Still kind of on the lookout? It is so important to zoom out when you look at crypto. So I’ve been at crypto for six years. Coinbase has been here for over 12 years. We’ve had quarters in the months that we’re up, we’ve had months that were

Down. But when you zoom out, we’ve had this really nice upward trajectory over time growth in users, growth in products, growth in countries, assets, crypto market cap, but is on a long term basis. We are investors for the long term. So what I’m excited about for the next

24 months is just continuing to roll out products to our customers. We’re looking to really grow our institutional product offering. We’re looking to expand internationally and we think we’re going to see a lot of activity on our Layer two solutions. So it’s going to be a good year where

When you say expand internationally, is it Asia? Is there, you know, a region that actually has embraced and will continue to embrace crypto with more open arms. You know, just last week we introduced a partnership with Yellow Card where we’re expanding into Africa.

We’re going to bring Stablecoins to the local market and we’re seeing a lot of daily use cases around payment activity, which we’re really excited about. But this year we launched our 2023, I should say. We launched in Canada, we launched in Brazil, Singapore, and we’re looking to

Really make steady growth in those markets that we’re in. So I think you’ve actually launched an international exchange rate since December. I think it was early December. Can you give us an idea of of numbers of flows of how exciting that is?

We can’t talk about numbers quite yet. We’ll be introducing earnings in February, but we’re starting to see good traction on the international exchange, which is opening up to a long tail of countries for access to the spot and derivatives markets. Can you give us a glimpse into what else

You have in store for us in 2024 in terms of new products? You know, 2023 was a big year because we announced asset management for the first time. We announced derivatives. We have many new products that we just got launched that we’re now looking to

Grow. So I don’t expect 2024 to be a big announcement around products. I expect us to see expansion and growth in many of our existing products, but we’ve just got a toehold in. Okay. So this is your first Davos. What are you most excited about? Oh, you have a million meetings.

We do. We do four. I’m really excited about is Davos would really help us with our gold fraud and grow deep international strategy. There’s many global leaders here. There’s an opportunity to talk about crypto regulation. There’s an opportunity to talk about how crypto will really benefit their users

In their markets and how Coinbase is a trusted counterparty and how we bring a different brand to the markets. And so we’re really looking forward to the meetings that we have on the schedule. I mean, broadly regulators, I know they’re different country, but do they

Understand a little bit better of, of what crypto is? I would say that we’re learning every single month and every single quarter and the education that we have today is tremendous compared to a year ago, two years ago. So, yes, and I think they’re starting to

See the differentiator between trusted and non trusted brands. And trust really plays into the Davos theme this year as well, which I’m excited about bringing Coinbase’s brand to that market. Who do you think is the regulator that gets it most?

I don’t know if there is one. Well, there’s not one in particular, but what you see is now 80% of the G20 countries have crypto regulation. So make us a great example. In Europe, we announced that we were putting our MICA hub in Ireland, and MICA is a great regulation that’s custom

To crypto. But you see that in Japan, you see that in Singapore, you see that in many countries around the world, big financial centers. And so we’re optimistic the US. Jumps into this and gets this right. But we’re definitely seeing a lot of thoughtful regulation in many countries.