Former Head OF Coinbase Joins Bakkt

According to reports, former head of Coinbase, a digital currency exchange, based in San Francisco, Adam White, is joining Bakkt, Intercontinental Exchange’s platform. This new addition to ICE’s team was revealed by anonymous sources after the issue was brought up in The Block, a news outlet, on 12th October.

White, Coinbase’s fifth employee, was instrumental in building its institutional exchange GDAX, left Coinbase in early October, refusing to provide details about his decision. However, an official from Coinbase said that the company was “extremely sad to see him go.”

Adam had worked for Coinbase for almost five years, since the times when the team gathered in a one bedroom apartment, and Bitcoin was priced at 200 USD. Coinbase now accepts bitcoin transactions and storages in 190 countries, around the world and allows the exchange of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and Litecoin with fiat currencies in 32 countries. A recent valuation of the firm stood at 8 billion USD. The company has made several very high profiles hires in the recent past, which include Charles Schwab Bank’s board member, Chris Dodds and former General Counsel of Frannie Mae, Brian Brooks as their new Chief Legal Officer. Tim Wagner, a former Amazon Web Services and Microsoft employee, also joined the company as the Vice President of Engineering.

Bakkt, is a crypto trading platform which is “scalable [crypto] on-ramp for institutions, merchants, and consumers” by the Intercontinental Exchange, which also operates the New York Stock Exchange and has been developed in partnership with companies like Microsoft and Starbucks. Its aim is to develop a one-stop shop of sorts, where, investors and users can buy, sell, trade, exchange and store digital assets in a single decentralised system, which would be hassle-free and faster, in the long run. Adam white joins the firm as its Chief Operating Officer and reports to the Chief Executive Officer, Kelly Loeffler. The platform was announced in August and is set to be launched in November.

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.