Hey, folks, Tony here at the Coinbase State of Crypto Summit, and joining me is A klil Ipse, who's the head of Corporate Development and M and A at Coinbase. A clil. Great to have you, great to be here, Thank you, A Clile. Tell us a bit about yourself. What do you what's your background and what do you do at Coinbase?
Yeah? Sure, So I started my current investment banking, spent about two years at Deutsche Bank in San Francisco, and
really wanted to jump into tech. I grew up playing a lot of video games and so kind of knew I wanted to be in technology, and so I joined LinkedIn, where I was on the M and a team there did a short stinton product management which we can which which we can get to, but really kind of around twenty seventeen, like a lot of people, got really into crypto and bought my first bitcoin and thought it was fascinating that there's this underlying technology that you know, eventually
entrepreneurs will build on top of it, which will then create products, which then create markets, which then create these like whole new platform shifts. And suffice to say, I was red pilled pretty hard. Sure, I joined a former boss of mine over to coinbase, and so I've been there now for almost about six years and now leading the corporate function.
Coinbase has made some very big and incredible acquisitions over the years, the most recent, I believe being dere A bit tell us a bit about that and what's the mission.
Yeah, so we're tremendously excited about the Deribate transaction, largest transaction in the history of crypto to date. And you know, really the thesis there was, you know, we want to build on top of and expand our institutional franchise, and with the Derived acquisition, it makes us the most comprehensive
crypto derivatives platform on the planet. They specialize in options where they're the number one in market share, and I think with that plus our futures business, plus our purpose business, it really makes us the most comprehensive platform for crypto derivatives and we're super super excited about it.
So I'm assuming you're seeing a lot of demand and appetite from the institutional investment, so this will allow you to cater to them.
That's exactly right. Yeah, So today we have Spot, we have Futures, we have Purps, and now this adds options, which again brings our platform to being the most comprehensive and crypto derivatives, and we're super excited about that and meeting clients with what they want at the right time.
And are your acquisitions going to be more focused on the institutional side or retail or both?
Yeah, great question, both, which is often the answer at coinbase. I would say, so, we're we're broadly focused on a couple of themes on the M and a strategy side. So one which we sort of talked about is derivatives and advanced trading. You know, seventy five percent of all volumes in crypto exist in derivatives, and you know, we are still primarily a spot business and so there's a lot of work for us to do there and Dererivid's
I think the first step in that direction. The secondary that we're focused on, and you know, part of the whole theme of this conference is around stable coins and payments, So we're very excited about the potential and opportunity there, and you know, it's actually quite validating to you know,
see same coins kind of being at the forefront. It feels like we're mainstream, non you know, the u SEC is a pretty you know, it's an older product for us, it's been around for some time, and so we're excited to accelerate what we're doing with USDC and payments.
Through M and A.
The third area, I would say is on chain, consumer and infrastructure. So, you know, if you rewind the clock maybe eighteen twenty four months, coinbase was primarily a centralized business, centralized exchange, offering basic you know, buy sell and different
types of services to retail institutional investors. And now with things like base coinbase Wall, you know, we're really pushing people on chain, pushing people into decentralization, and acquisitions like Spindle are really interesting adjacencies that allow us to kind of really accelerate what we're doing with the on chain business side. That's another one. And then the last one,
which I'm personally most excited about, is international expansion. So today our business is primarily US based around eighty percent, and we're trying to build an open financial system for the world, and you can't do that if it's just in the United States. And so I'm personally very excited to expand our foot and internationally and specifically within the retail side from.
The retail perspective. I'm curious about this majority of people. You know, they search on Google via the mobile phone. Everything revolves a mobile around the mobile phone. So are you building the experience more so on that end versus say desktop or a computer.
I think, you know, as is often the case of coinbase, it's both. So yeah, that's right. So I would I would say, you know, different customers have different needs and different markets, and we see that across the twenty plus markets that we serve coinbase today, at least from the retail app side, and many many, many more across our Coinbase wall app. And you know, be it desktop, be it mobile, be it a centralized experience or a decentralized experience.
You know, the thesis is really to become the primary account within the crypto economy, and you know that means offering desktop experiences, mobile experience at centralized experiences, decentralized experiences, and whatever the customer needs are, we intend to meet that.
And then in expanding globally, I've read and I've seen different surveys and reports. The majority of it is around stable coins. People want the US dollar back stable coins because maybe they're in a country at hyperinflation. Are you seeing mostly demand being around US dollar back stable coins because people want the world reserve currency.
I think that's right, you know, and this is a this is an area that's you know, personally very exciting for me around stable coin and dollar access. My parents
are from Ethiopia. You know, the burr is not the most stable currency in the world, and you know, it's so exciting to have this go from you know, almost like an experiment that we did with USDC in partnership with our friends at Circle to now a legitimate way in which you can get access to dollars and we're seeing a lot of demand for that right now.
M M. And then from a tokenized asset standpoint, anything you can share there. Maybe it might be too early or you're in the process of looking at things.
Like yeah, yeah, great, great question. So institutional access is definitely an area that is of utmost importance and an area that we're really excited about on the M and A side. We think with the regulatory environment, you know, notably the market structure and the Genius Bill, it really is paving the way for you know, things like tokenization and r WA's and a number of these things that we've kind of all talked about for so long in
crypto to really kind of become a thing. And I would say on the M and A side, we're very excited about it.
But early days, yeah, it seems like tokenization is a hot topic. Everybody's trying to put stocks and traditional assets on the unchained. Yeah, don't forget real estate in real estate. Yeah, that's very Yeah, it's like a brave new world and there's so many different sectors being developed, whether it be deep en, AI, RWA, obviously tokenization. So it's exciting. What's on your roadmap as far as that you can share of course.
Yeah, yeah, So it's kind of the themes I talked about earlier. So I would say on chain, consumer infrastructure, derivatives and advanced trading, international expansion, institutional access, and then
stable coin and payments are really the five areas. And you know, we have a pretty diversified business retail, you know, now we just announced quite based for business and now businesses, institutions and developers, and we have a pretty aggressive I would say M and A roadmap over the next top twenty four months, and you know, we anticipate you would be hearing a lot more from US across those five areas.
That's exciting. And with the coinbase for Business, it seems that's the untapped sector, maybe because you need the on and off rams, people being able to buy and spend and all that.
Yeah, I think businesses is truly it is very much an untapped area. And you know, I think what is really I would say woken up the industry is you know, stable coin payments and businesses actually using them for actual utility and usage. And you know, I think historically there have been a lot of attempts and a lot of things where you know, people would try different experiment experiments and things like that. And I think payments has really
brought businesses into the limelight around crypto adoption. And you know, we're really excited about that. You know, with coinbas for Business, we are launching a product that essentiallyows you to store, save, send, receive all on crypto with unified onboarding and really really quick onboarding. So Taylor made for like the modern business. And you know, there's only that's just the beginning. I think there's a lot of opportunity to help accelerate that through m and I.
Yeah, I see that being like a big on ramp for crypto adoption because if you can go to your favorite store merchant and be able to use your crypto in that way or stable points, yep, just makes things a lot easier.
Yeah, totally agree.
Oklet pleasure, thank you so much.
Yeah, of course, it's great to be here.
Awesome