Coinbase has hired LinkedIn’s M&A boss to spearhead new acquisitions

Coinbase is continuing its executive hiring spree as the company has announced that Emilie Choi is joining Coinbase as vice president of Corporate and Business Development.

Choi comes from LinkedIn where she was vice president of Corporate Development and oversaw a total of 40 M&A-related transactions. Prior to that she worked in business development roles at both Warner Brothers and Yahoo.

The hire makes sense for Coinbase, a fast-growing startup that has had trouble keeping up with user growth and activity — both from a customer service and technical perspective. Having someone to spearhead acquisitions could help on this front — with limited engineering talent in the crypto space it can often make more sense to acquire or acqui-hire a startup either as a way to onboard a bunch of engineers at once or to quickly get a piece of technology without having to build it in-house.

Coinbase says that Choi “will be focused on scaling Coinbase globally, seeking out world-class acquisition and partnership opportunities, and managing our strategic projects.”

So far Coinbase hasn’t had any big acquisitions — but that may change under Choi’s leadership, especially considering the company is now well capitalized from both significant venture funding ($225 million to date) and now from running a super profitable trading business.