10 Questions Everyone Is Asking Coinbase’s First Chief Business Officer

Shan Aggarwal, Coinbase’s First Chief Business Officer, leading a fireside conversation with Coinbase’s co-founders Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam III at Coinbase Ventures’ annual summit, September 2024

Coinbase

Over the past few weeks, I had the opportunity to sit down with Shan Aggarwal, Coinbase’s newly appointed Chief Business Officer—a first-of-its-kind role at the crypto exchange. Shan’s background defies the conventional tech-executive mold: having started on the medical path with a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience from UCLA, then pivoting and working his way to a position on the forefront of crypto’s corporate strategy, M&A, and partnerships.

From managing capital raising and capital markets activity from Coinbase’s 2018 Series E through its 2021 public listing, to rising as one of the youngest executives at a Fortune 500 today, Shan’s leadership comes at a pivotal moment for the company. With institutional demand surging and regulatory clarity emerging, Aggarwal is tasked with driving Coinbase’s next phase of growth beyond its roots as a retail trading platform.

Here’s what he shared about the company’s strategy, market outlook, and vision for crypto’s mainstream future.

1. What is your role as CBO of Coinbase?

My role as Chief Business Officer is really about connecting all the dots across Coinbase’s growth engine. I oversee our ecosystem partnerships, business operations and strategy, data and analytics, M&A, and investments. Think of it as being the bridge between our product teams and the market opportunities we’re seeing, defining what we should do and how we should execute.

I’m focused on how we grow Coinbase, not just as a trading platform, but as the infrastructure that powers the entire crypto economy. That means working with institutions, retail partners, and emerging projects to embed crypto into the core of global financial infrastructure.

2. What are Coinbase’s top 3 priorities under your leadership?

First, we’re focused on building the best trading products by adding support for assets beyond crypto in order to cater to traders. This includes equities, futures and perpetual futures, crypto-native assets, prediction markets, and more.

Second, we’re leveraging the platform that we’ve built to enable institutional adoption. Enterprise demand is massive right now, and we’ve built this amazing platform that’s turnkey for partners to offer crypto trading, staking, and more to their end users.

Third, we’re focused on payments and expanding stablecoin adoption. We’re building products that enable first-party payments and a platform for other businesses to offer crypto payments. Throughout these priorities, we remain focused on international expansion: scaling our global footprint and driving our mission to expand economic freedom for people and businesses everywhere.

3. What does growth look like for Coinbase in this market cycle?

Growth today is about quality over quantity. We’re not chasing vanity metrics. It’s about deepening relationships with our highest-value customers and expanding our share of their crypto needs. That means driving deeper engagement with our customers by broadening the range of services that we offer to include more than trading – saving, spending, financing, and more.

We’re also seeing huge opportunities in B2B growth – powering other companies’ crypto strategies rather than just serving end consumers directly. We call this Crypto as a Service. With increasing regulatory clarity, we can offer white-label solutions and infrastructure APIs that let other companies integrate crypto without building from scratch.

The enterprise builder ecosystem is massive. Think about all the fintech companies, payment processors, and traditional businesses that want crypto capabilities but don’t want to deal with compliance, custody, or technical complexity. We become their crypto backbone. We’re seeing this through our partnerships with BlackRock and PNC using our infrastructure for their institutional crypto services, and companies like Perplexity integrating crypto data into their platform.

These partnerships are game-changing because they bring crypto to users who might never download a crypto app. We’re not just growing our direct user base, we’re powering crypto adoption across the entire digital economy. This approach allows us to broaden the base of end users that we serve and accelerate crypto adoption.

4. What’s your prediction on stablecoins and their regulatory future with Coinbase’s Positin?

Stablecoins represent a platform shift in payments. We believe that all of the asset classes in the world will eventually come onchain, and we see stablecoins as one of the first and most important categories. The regulatory clarity that we’re starting to see legitimizes stablecoins and sets a clear foundation for growth with a consistent framework for essential components like reserve requirements and transparency.

I think we’ll see a bifurcation between compliant, transparent stablecoins and everything else. The winners will be the operators who work closely with regulators rather than against them. We’re already starting to see stablecoins get more deeply integrated into the traditional financial system, and I expect that this will continue as stablecoins offer a more efficient, global, and lower-cost rail for moving dollars.

Overall, a digital economy needs digital money — stablecoins are that missing piece. And Coinbase is uniquely positioned post-GENIUS Act with broad USDC distribution and the ability to offer industry-leading rewards.

5. How is Coinbase positioning for the next crypto bull run vs. bear market?

We’re building for the long-term and thinking across cycles. In bear markets, we focus on scaling our infrastructure to support the next waves of adoption and investing in long-term builders. In bull markets, we focus on optimizing the customer experience and new product innovation.

We’re investing heavily in Coinbase as a platform because we believe that with regulatory clarity, more and more businesses will come into the space. We’re also building new revenue streams that are less correlated with transaction volumes: stablecoin interest, custody fees, staking rewards, and more. The goal is to be anti-fragile regardless of where prices go.

6. What’s Coinbase’s Acceleration Strategy? What role will traditional finance play in crypto’s mainstream adoption?

Traditional finance will play a pivotal role in crypto’s mainstream adoption by acting as a bridge between legacy systems and decentralized financial ecosystems. As CBO, I see partnerships with institutions like JPMorgan Chase and American Express as critical to accelerating adoption. These collaborations expand access to crypto, lower barriers for consumers, and integrate crypto into everyday financial activities, such as payments and rewards programs. (Read about Coinbase’s partnership with Perplexity as well.)

By leveraging the trust and infrastructure of traditional finance, we can onboard the next wave of users into crypto, helping make economic freedom a reality for millions globally.

We’re already seeing this now. We’re seeing that those who were skeptical are asking how to custody Bitcoin for their clients, asset managers wanting crypto ETFs and index products, and payment companies seeking stablecoin rails. Our job is to be the infrastructure that lets them participate safely and compliantly. TradFi is meeting crypto, and Coinbase is the bridge.

7. Which emerging crypto sectors (DeFi, NFTs, RWAs) present the biggest opportunities for Coinbase?

Real-world assets are huge right now.

Tokenizing everything from real estate to commodities is unlocking new markets and creating liquidity where it didn’t exist before. DeFi is also maturing beyond just yield farming, becoming the backbone of new, legitimate financial infrastructure. At Coinbase, we believe the future of every asset class is onchain, and we’re laser-focused on building the infrastructure to make that vision a reality.

The key is identifying use cases that solve real-world problems at real-world scale, not just fueling crypto-native speculation, although that’s important too.

8. How is Coinbase approaching international expansion vs. US regulatory challenges?

While we’re excited about the steps the US has been taking toward regulatory clarity, there are massive opportunities globally in markets where the rules are clearer and the opportunities are immediate.

Regions like Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America are moving fast on crypto regulation and adoption, and we’re matching that pace by building local partnerships and compliance capabilities tailored to each region. While the US remains a critical market, we won’t let an incomplete regulatory picture here hold back our global ambitions. Crypto is a global phenomenon, and we’re positioning Coinbase to lead on that stage.

9. What’s your Coinbase M&A strategy – build vs. buy for key capabilities?

We have and will continue to be very active on the M&A front. We believe that M&A is core to our growth engine, and a capability that we’ve built up over the years. Once we define a strategy, we always consider build, buy, and partner execution paths. We build core platform capabilities in-house because that’s our bread and butter, and we need these to be deeply integrated with our platform.

When we acquire, we’re looking for opportunities that accelerate our roadmap and bring differentiated technology, expertise, licensing, and/or a scaled business into our suite. Recent examples include Deribit, the leading crypto options exchange, as well as Spindl, a novel onchain advertising protocol and exchange.

With these acquisitions, we’re strengthening our product capabilities and seeding new revenue opportunities. We also believe in the strength of amazing talent and have done smaller acqui-hires to bring in specialized teams. The key is integration – acquisitions only work if they strengthen our core platform rather than becoming isolated silos.

10. Five years from now, what do you want Coinbase to stand for?

I want Coinbase to be the best place for users, institutions, and their end clients to store and grow their wealth. Customers should know that they have access to differentiated opportunities on Coinbase, all through our trusted and intuitive products. That’s what we’re building towards: an everything exchange and full-fledged financial platform. Every asset you want to trade in a one-stop shop, and the best place to grow your money and manage everyday finances, all on crypto rails.

Further, I want Coinbase to be synonymous with crypto infrastructure the way AWS is with cloud computing. Base is building a future onchain economy that powers a range of onchain crypto use cases, including financial, social, and much more. Whether you’re a startup launching a token, a bank offering crypto services, or a country exploring digital currencies, Coinbase should be the trusted infrastructure partner. We want to be essential rather than optional, powering innovation across every sector that touches crypto.

What I Learned About Coinbase From Shan

What I learned from my conversation with Shan is that Coinbase isn’t just preparing for the next bull run—it’s building the rails for crypto’s long-term future. The strategy is less about chasing hype cycles and more about embedding crypto into everyday finance, from powering institutional adoption to expanding stablecoin use cases and international markets. Shan made it clear that quality growth, deeper customer relationships, and serving as the “crypto backbone” for enterprises are the levers that matter most right now.

I also walked away with a sharper view of Coinbase’s ambition: to become the “everything exchange” for digital assets and the AWS of crypto infrastructure. Whether it’s tokenizing real-world assets, creating compliant and trusted stablecoins, or bridging traditional finance with Web3, Shan’s vision is that Coinbase won’t just participate in the future of money. It will help define it.

That’s a bold mission, and one I’ll be watching closely for Coinbase’s next moves.