Coinbase’s Balaji Srinivasan leaves after one year as CTO 🚨 This article is 6 years old...
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Coinbase’s Balaji Srinivasan leaves after one year as CTO
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Updated: Nov. 7, 2019 at 5:59 am UTC
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
Balaji Srinivasan appears to be leaving Coinbase after serving one year as chief technology officer.
In a tweet on May 3rd, Balaji Srinivasan announced he “taking a bit of time off” from his role as CTO at Coinbase. That said, the content of his announcement appears to indicate he is leaving Coinbase.
2/2 Coinbase was fun and it was energizing working with so many great people. I'll be taking a bit of time off to get back in shape — and up to speed on everything happening while I was heads down. More soon!
— Balaji S. Srinivasan (@balajis) May 4, 2019
CryptoSlate reached out to Srinivasan for additional details on the terms and duration of his departure and has yet to receive a response.
Balaji Srinivasan is an engineer and serial entrepreneur who has co-founded a myriad of startups, including Earn.com which was acquired by Coinbase for $120 million in April of 2018. Earn.com was integrated into the exchange as Coinbase Earn, which partnered with a number of different projects including Zcash, 0x, Basic Attention Token, and Stellar Lumens.
During his time at Coinbase, Srinivasan also helped launch Coinbase’s stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), integrated staking (and soon voting) for Tezos, and helped bring a variety of different coins to the Coinbase platform.
One of Crypto’s Most Respected Technologists
Balaji Srinivasan is known as a prolific technologist. Prior to Coinbase, he was also a general partner at software venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z), which has made notable crypto investments in projects including Ethereum, Dfinity, and Maker.
Prior to his work at a16z, Srinivasan was the CTO and co-founder of Counsyl—a company which developed a pre-pregnancy genomic test for heritable diseases. From a Stanford startup to testing roughly 3 percent of all births in the United States, his work for Counsyl won Balaji Srinivasan Wall Street Journal’s innovation award for medicine.
Brian Armstrong described Srinivasan as “one of the most respected technologists in crypto” following Coinbase’s acquisition of Earn.com. Following his departure, figureheads in the crypto, such as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and Block.one CEO and EOS co-founder Brendan Blumer, bid Srinivasan farewell:
Thank you @balajis for your incredible contributions to @coinbase! You will be missed and I can't wait to see what your next chapter has in store 🙂 https://t.co/nnM8jjYWGQ
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) May 4, 2019
Has been great to see your impact on such an important representative for our whole industry
— Brendan Blumer (@BrendanBlumer) May 4, 2019
The terms and length of Srinivasan’s departure are still unknown. Moreover, it’s unclear who will replace Srinivasan as CTO at Coinbase.
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Zcash is a decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency that offers privacy and selective transparency of transactions using advanced cryptography.
Ethereum
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Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain platform that enables the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps).
Maker
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Maker is a decentralized autonomous organization on the Ethereum blockchain seeking to minimize the price volatility of its own stable token — the Dai — against the IMF’s international currency basket SDR.
0x
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0x is an open, permissionless protocol allowing for ERC20 tokens to be traded on the Ethereum blockchain..
Coinbase
Coinbase is a digital currency exchange and wallet service that allows individuals to buy, sell, and store digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.
Balaji Srinivasan is recognized for his influential roles in the tech and cryptocurrency sectors, most notably as the former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Coinbase.
Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, stands at the forefront of the digital currency revolution.