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Coinbase’s Balaji Srinivasan leaves after one year as CTO Coinbase’s Balaji Srinivasan leaves after one year as CTO
๐Ÿšจ This article is 6 years old...

Coinbase’s Balaji Srinivasan leaves after one year as CTO

Coinbase’s Balaji Srinivasan leaves after one year as CTO

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.

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 Coinbaseโ€™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 Cryptoโ€™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 Counsylโ€”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 Journalโ€™s innovation award for medicine.

Brian Armstrong described Srinivasan as โ€œone of the most respected technologists in cryptoโ€ following Coinbaseโ€™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:

The terms and length of Srinivasanโ€™s departure are still unknown. Moreover, itโ€™s unclear who will replace Srinivasan as CTO at Coinbase.

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