Coinbase adds Shopify CEO to board

Coinbase announced on Monday that it will bring Shopify’s CEO and co-founder onto its board. 

The company said Tobias ‘Tobi’ Lütke would bring experience and a new perspective as it looks to build out its product offerings and expand into new regions. 

Coinbase CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong said the open source programmer “deeply believes in the power of crypto and was an early adopter of crypto through Shopify’s integration with Coinbase Commerce.”

Coinbase is hoping to tap both Shopify’s reach — it serves merchants in more than 175 countries — and its expertise, straddling finance, payments web applications and “the internet itself.”

“With his guidance, we hope to unlock crypto’s potential to increase economic freedom in the same way Shopify democratized online commerce,” said Armstrong. 

Lütke began his career as an active member of the open source community having contributed to projects such as Ruby on Rails, Liquid and ActiveMerchant. He was an early arrival to e-commerce, launching a brand selling snowboarding equipment in 2004, which evolved into Shopify. 

Shopify lets customers pay in crypto and supports the selling and minting of NFTs. 

“The concepts of decentralized finance and entrepreneurship exemplify the promise of Web3 where opportunity exists for the many, not the few,” said Tobi Lutke. “Coinbase and Shopify share this like-minded vision, and I am excited to join the Board to support the future that Brian and the Coinbase team are building.”

The move will be subject to formal board confirmation later this week.