Legal Counsel, Coinbase
Institutional
£92.7-103k
+ Target bonus + Target equity
The world’s leading exchange for digital currencies
Open for applications
The world’s leading exchange for digital currencies
1001+ employees
Open for applications
£92.7-103k
+ Target bonus + Target equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
Their mission is to create an open financial system for the world and to be the leading global brand for helping people convert digital currency into and out of their local currency.
Role
Who you are
- You’ve got positive energy. You’re optimistic about the future and determined to get there
- You’re never tired of learning. You want to be a pro in bleeding edge tech like DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and Web 3.0
- You appreciate direct communication. You’re both an active communicator and an eager listener - because let’s face it, you can’t have one without the other. You’re cool with candid feedback and see every setback as an opportunity to grow
- You can pivot on the fly. Crypto is constantly evolving, so our priorities do, too. What you worked on last month may not be what you work on today, and that excites you. You’re not looking for a boring job
- You have a “can do” attitude. Our teams create high-quality work on quick timelines. Owning a problem doesn’t scare you, but rather empowers you to take 100% responsibility for achieving our mission
- You want to be part of a winning team. We’re stronger together, and you’re a person who embraces being pushed out of your comfort zone
- We’re looking for a lawyer with solid product development, regulatory and negotiation skills preferably developed within the traditional prime brokerage, securities financing, and/or derivatives sectors
- A sense of curiosity, flexibility and adventure combined with the desire to make an impact at the intersection of crypto and traditional global markets is essential
- Qualified solicitor in England and Wales with at least 2 years experience working in a financial services institution in the UK (e.g. e-money issuer, payment service firm, broker dealer / asset manager) or in a law firm supporting such clients (ideally with some previous in-house experience)
- Interest in digital currency and blockchain technology
- Experience working with product teams launching fintech, financial services, investment or similar products
- Experience working and leading with cross-functional, globally located teams
- Familiarity with UK/EU regulatory regimes applicable to financial instruments (including MiFID, EMIR, AIFMD) and crypto assets (e.g. MiCA, AMLD)
- Comfortable challenging the status quo and preconceived notions of what is possible
- Excellent judgement, analytical rigour, clear communication, and business pragmatism
- Top-notch analytical skills with experience owning projects from concept to finish
- Creativity, comfort and experience with oral solutions that help scale financial services businesses and technology solutions that help scale practices
- Sound and practical business judgement
- Intellectual curiosity and flexibility
- Team-oriented and collaborative
Desirable
- Experience supporting critical authorisation and license applications for spot and derivatives expansion in multiple jurisdictions
- Experience analyzing the regulatory status of crypto assets and whether they may qualify as regulated financial instruments (e.g. under MiFID)
- Experience of advising on cross-border licensing requirements, safe-harbors and creating client classification procedures
- Strong negotiation skills and ability to review and negotiate financial agreements (e.g. prime brokerage, lending and derivatives documentation)
- Experience registering and perfecting collateral arrangements
What the job involves
- The Legal Counsel (Institutional Legal) role will be based in the UK working as part of the Institutional Legal team covering international markets and professional trading clients including banks, brokers, hedge funds, market makers corporates and other professional traders
- The team consists of a small but highly experienced group of lawyers from a combination of traditional finance and fintech backgrounds
- The role reports into the head of the team and covers institutional products including prime brokerage, exchange, trading and custody, derivatives and financing products
- Negotiate first-of-a-kind, highly-tailored agreements with strategic partners and sophisticated counterparties in the finance, payments and digital currency space
- Provide full product life-cycle counseling for a variety of global prime brokerage, custody and derivatives related products, and practical advice on associated legal issues and risks, complex agreement structures and company policies in a risk-tolerant, but compliance-oriented environment
- Stay abreast of and advise on digital currency and blockchain technology legal and regulatory issues
- Lead and assist with complex and global cross-functional efforts, driving and ensuring cross-functional alignment with other stakeholders (Institutional Sales, Business Development, Product/Engineering, Finance/Tax, Compliance)
- Effectively collaborate with those same cross-functional teams and legal colleagues to solve problems, build partnerships, and close deals quickly
- Proactively solve problems for the business as they plan and execute on an aggressive global growth plan, develop scaled strategies for addressing risk in business-centric ways and build commercial processes that allow the business flexibility and freedom to move quickly
- Look around corners and creatively solve problems for the business as they plan, build, and execute their transactional and product roadmap
- Be a business partner, not just a lawyer
Our take
Coinbase allows its users to create their own crypto wallets and start buying or selling cryptocurrencies by connecting with their bank accounts. It also provides a series of merchant payment processing systems and tools that support transactions with many popular websites.
Coinbase has recently made a big push to broaden its services away from consumers and they want to cater services from institutional investors.
Coinbase currently offers one of the largest selection of cryptocurrency assets - over 10,000 but does not allow trading on all of them. The company wisely keeps such offerings to the most stable assets however, the list is always expanding. Coinbase see a much wider adoption of cryptocurrency and tokens in the future, and plan to expand potentially to millions in the future. It speaks volumes to Coinbase's goals of wider global adoption that former UK Finance Minister George Osborne is now an Advisor at the company.
Coinbase's lofty ambitions paid off in it being the first crypto listing on the NASDAQ. The company has weathered several bull and bear runs in the cryptocurrency industry through diversification of its offerings, including wallet-as-a-service technology for crypto platforms, and has acquired healthy coffers of cryptocurrency assets. The aim is to eventually operate independently of the volatility surrounding cryptocurrencies.
Freddie
Company Specialist
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Oct 2018
$300m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Oct 2018
$108.1m
SERIES D
Total funding: $633.4m
Company benefits
- 12 weeks maternity/paternity leave
- Vision and dental care
- Commuter benefits
- Learning and development budget
- Unlimited paid time off policy
- Work from home opportunities
- Health insurance
Company values
- Clear Communication - Share information efficiently, improving collaboration and productivity. Practice active listening while. Being candid and kind
- Positive Energy - Be optimistic about the future and determined to get there. Co-create solutions and work together to get there
- Continuous Learning - We view every situation as an opportunity to learn, We value giving and receiving regular feedback
- Efficient Execution - We complete high quality work quickly by working smarter, not harder. We prefer automation over manual work
- Act like an owner: We take 100% responsibility for achieving the mission. We seek to improve all aspects of our company even in ways that are not explicitly part of our job. We run through brick walls.
- Customer focus: We are deeply focused on solving our customers’ problems with technology, by enabling them to acquire, store and use crypto. We strive to be the easiest to use, most trusted and most secure platform. In every decision we make, we ask, “How does this create more value for our customers?”
- Repeatable innovation: We are builders, leveraging technology to improve the world, constantly shipping ideas vs just discussing them. We know that companies must continually reinvent themselves to avoid stagnation. We have a high tolerance for failure, investing 10% of our resources in venture bets that are uncomfortably ambitious
Company HQ
Civic Center, New York, NY
Articles
Leadership
Brian Armstrong
(CEO)Previously founded UniversityTutor.com, also worked as a Software Engineer at AirBnb
Alessia Haas
(CFO)Previously held various head positions, including VP at GE Healthcare, Director at Merrill Lynch and CFO at CIT Bank and Oz Management
People progressing
Joined as a Compliance Analyst, promoted to Compliance Partnerships Senior Associate in 15 months. 2 promotions later, she is now a Financial Crimes & Compliance Manager.
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