Crypto Exchange Coinbase Shuffles Asia-Pacific Team

Coinbase, the first crypto exchange to go public on a US stock market, on November 30 announced leadership changes to its Asia-Pacific team, following its focus on Singapore as a tech hub last year and obtaining recent regulatory approval in the country.

John O’Loghlen, who joined Coinbase as country director for Australia from Ant Group in July, will be expanding his role at Coinbase. In addition to being Australia’s Country Director, he has been appointed Regional Managing Director of APAC. He will lead the company’s focused approach in the region in 2023, and bolster its long term commitment to APAC.

A couple of days ago, it was announced that O’Loghlen has also been appointed to the board of Blockchain Australia, the country’s peak industry network for businesses implementation or evaluating blockchain technology.

San Francisco-based Coinbase also said it had hired Katie Mitchell as head of policy in APAC, continuing to lead on its commitment to regulatory clarity and thoughtful crypto-forward policy in partnership with governments. Mitchell previously worked as global head of public policy and government engagement at Crypto.com, and prior to that spent a decade at Visa in policy-related roles based in Washington, D.C., and Asia-Pacific offices. She was also one of the leading members of Singapore’s inaugural Payments Sub-Committee under the Singapore Fintech Association, and served as chair of the inaugural Web3 Sub-Committee.

Meanwhile, APAC head of market operations Marc Robinson and Justin Choi, head of corporate development and ventures for APAC, have both left the company, according to The Block, citing people familiar with the matter.

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Founded in 2012, Coinbase has over 100 million verified users globally. The leading crypto exchange has also experienced an extortion attempt. A malicious actor emailed Coinbase, claiming to have “dehashed” and “decrypted” sensitive data from 306 million user accounts. The individual threatened to go public with this information if Coinbase didn’t shell out $450,000.

Coinbase confirmed it was an absolutely baseless extortion attempt. The individual was falsifying information to come across as legitimate, trying to extort money out of various companies.