Name: Brainstorm Finance 2019: Coinbase CFO Discusses Challenges Faced With Clients
Uploaded: 2019-06-20
Duration: 16 min 9 s
Description: Cryptocurrency’s rollercoaster volatility means new challenges for handling everything from payments to taxes, and more.

Brainstorm Finance 2019: Coinbase CFO Discusses Challenges Faced With Clients

Finance

Cryptocurrency’s rollercoaster volatility means new challenges for handling everything from payments to taxes, and more.

Alicia, I want to start with you. I think that most people in the room will be familiar with coin based. But for those who aren't, give us give us, like, one minute to help ground us in the conversation. What is coin based? Perfect clinical standard in 2012. To be the easiest and most trusted place where you can buy trade and store digital assets. We have over 30 million accounts that we steward assets on behalf of both retail institutions, business and a broad variety of customers. And we operate in over 100 countries globally. Okay, so by trade and store, my mind goes to the word brokerage. And is that the right word or not? We think of ourselves in the traditional vernacular as both an exchange, a brokerage as well as a custodian. So recently in the last year, we launched a qualified custodian. We custody assets on behalf of institutions over two billion of assets in private addresses, and I think you know, if there's two themes of our events so far. One is Facebook's Libra announcement, which you're intimately involved in, and we're gonna get to that and the other is this sort of very generic expression Use cases? Um, my assumption. And when you talk about 30 million accounts. Since there aren't many use cases for cryptocurrencies right now, these people are speculators. Yes. Will you address that? Absolutely. And as we just talked about, given the primary products that were operating in today our investment type products over 90 95 99. I mean, you can argue about the number of the use cases of digital assets, a speculative trading today, and that is where we see all interest and activity for most markets. However, in the last year, and I would say over the last 12 to 18 months we've seen tremendous development of the utility cases in digital assets, and there's a lot of promising new companies that are bringing innovative ideas and products to the table. These are all nation states were so early in the adoption of these utility phase of Cryptocurrency. But I think there's a lot of interest and excitement there. Good. I like the way you you know, you don't take speculation as an accusation. It's it's a fact, but it shows what the opportunity is that is that fair. That's right. And I think it's getting people educated on the various projects that are out there making sure we have broad consumer business understanding of the different digital asset projects that people have brought to the market and given the mark opportunity to interact with these. Good Patrick. First of all, uh, it's privileged to have you here as someone who was around for what Brad Garlinghouse just called Web One point. Oh, you have been around since Web one point. Oh, and and before that? Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, it's That's an accomplishment all by itself. Um, I want to read a line from From From your bio that you are a leading force in advancing Blockchain technology to democratize capital, eliminate middlemen and re humanize commerce. I particularly like the re humanizing commerce part. Um, how everybody briefly, as Alicia did briefly to set things up your journey from being a pioneer and e commerce to a pioneer in Blockchain technologies. Well, it's very common. It's an honor to be here, Adam. Thank you. Fortunate we were back in night in 2000 and 13. The largest company accepting Bitcoin was an $800,000 a year diner in Australia. And oddly enough, it was a conversation with the journal. I was I was getting into Bitcoin and a journalist asked me around December 19th. Hey, you think anything Bitcoin in the New War in the New Year? And I said, Yeah, yeah, probably by the end of the New Year. And she put that in an article, and what was interesting was that got reproduced all over the world. I got all these Google alerts in Swahili and Thai and Korean, and I realized, Wait, there is this late and there really is this global subculture out there waiting for it. 15 days later with coin base or January 9th we went, we went live. We took some coin based folks and some Overstock folks and put them in a room for 15 days, flip pizzas under the door, and we got live January 9th, and it really was not so, Anyway, that's that was the journey into it. But my real, uh, it's not Bitcoin and the Blockchain itself, and it was my ambition that our company would develop a lot of expertise with Blockchain so that we could then take it and do other projects. That was my journey, and I'm going to come to your other projects. But what I What? What's fascinating about your anecdote? Did you already consider yourself an expert on these topics or or was this more of an exploratory thing that happened in that interview? And then you said, uh, I better get going. I had for about three months been getting reading about Bitcoin. Oddly enough, I used to study the mathematics under cryptography. So when Bitcoin came along, I tuned in on it, but just from that sort of mathematical interest. And it was only in the fall of 2013 that I started really seriously, considering A from a business point of view. Fascinating. So, Alicia, you come from a traditional corporate finance background, and so you're now at this company that is on the cutting edge of whatever happens next, and so share with everybody. Two things, if you would. One is what you've had to do as chief financial officer of coin base to get coin bases, finances where they need to be, and then how that translates to the greater to the greater market. In other words, if this market is moving where we where we think it might. Every company will need to do what coin base is doing. It's true. So there's many commonalities between Coin Base and any other company I've worked for. So I first want to dispel the belief that this is so unique and different that we need to build different framework to think about accounting tax, et cetera. That being said, there is ambiguity underneath accounting policy underneath tax code that need to be resolved very much like the regulatory clarity that we're looking for that Brad spoke to you about in the prior panel. And so I do think that one of coin basis rules is to advocate and work with our industry partners to get to broad based adopted policies and interpretations under existing code, both in the U. S. And then globally. So leaving that aside the challenges that we face with our clients. So if I look at our hedge fund clients who want to custody assets with us or trade with us, some of their unique challenges are how do you reconcile assets to the Blockchain? How do I value these assets? How do I ensure the basic frameworks that we then hold with all of our other financial assets that are widely traded in the traditional markets and those I think we've made great strides on over the past year. I think that there's many of the Big Four as well as next year accounting firms who have pressed practices and procedures that they can audit these assets. I think firms are now getting unqualified opinions, and so I think that is moving very quickly, and I feel very good about that. I'm a church removing the traditional finance side that what I think is most interesting about the potential. Not today reality where most of our trades are speculative, Um, which I think we're addressing with these kind of bricks and mortar. Tackling things around policies and procedures is the opportunity to change our transaction flow. And that's something that is, Patrick alluded to. We did partner early through our commerce products with Overstock, and that's the ability and we're great partners. You are a great partner, were great. They were a great partner for us, and this allows companies to be able to accept digital assets and provide services to provide some of these services to you around. How do you confirm the transaction? And how could we provide reconciliation services, et cetera. Um but I think these accepting of transactions of different types for all traditional corporate finance functions and all accounts receivable and accounts payable functions, or something that we're really excited about helping move forward as an industry. A chief financial officer. Are these ambiguities stressful? You know, yes and no. I think that, like anything else, you have to take a position and take your own well, research well defined policy and move forward. We can't wait for things to be defined in order to move our business forward. So we take an educated view. We work with our trusted advisers, and I think that we have good reason to positions at this time. Great. Patrick Bitcoin ended up being a tiny portion of Overstock dot coms transaction business, but it led you to become an investor yourself, and particularly to found a company called T zero t zero. Tell everybody about it zero. Whose CEO Sam North holiday is right here? Is I Yeah. I think the killer app of this is going to be, uh, security tokens is my view and four or five years ago I made the decision to take this stuff and do a regulated version of it. I'm just kind of curious. Anyone? Anyone here old enough to remember a little, a little a little consultant? I got in with Wall Street 15 years ago. Raise your hand and some of you remember that. Okay, that at its core was all about settlement. It freaked me out when I understood the settlement system. I'm autistic and Asperger's. And you know, Asperger's kids can't play kickball with other kids because the ball hits the line. It's like, How can you play on it? Hit the line. If you ever find out how the settlement system actually works in America, it is so much slop you would freak out like I did in five. Uh, so to me, the in the last guest, you had made a great point. There is so much capital underneath the settlement system, buffering different points that we can liberate. So to me, the killer app is security tokens, and we built a system, spent a fortune, spent 200,000,150 million of shareholder money, but taking every step through because of that fight 15 years ago, I knew that I had to be like Caesar's wife above reproach that I had. I had to go right down the middle of the fairway up to the front steps of the SEC, and that is how we have done it or think we've done it. And I mentioned to you backstage that I stick with the commitments I made in my last earnings call that you will see some very interesting things announced this quarter. Okay, it's some very interesting things announced this quarter around security tokens, and the quarter has how many days left in it. Nine days. What I don't understand is with this fantastic audience and the livestream around the world, why don't you just make those announcements right now? Look at this. You even have enthusiasm for it here. Well, it's more, and I just want to point. There's no reggae FD issues. All I'm doing is reaffirming predictions. I made my own news call, and I need to wait the next week. There's things coming out in order to avoid having Regev Yes, legal issues and lawyer law firms ripping my head off. Okay, ELISA, Uh, we had Katie on on last night. She's, uh, Andreessen. Horowitz, and a founding member of the remind me of the right way to say it. The consortium consortium, the liberal consortium. So is coin based. Um, why let me start there. Sure. And I would like to also comment on Patrick View on security tokens, as Queen also believes that the security tokens are a future wonderful item will come to market. We think that there's supply. We think there's infrastructure and we think there's demand. And we don't think all those pieces are yet at the table where we're gonna see huge growth in this. But we think that the noise is there and the excitement there. And so we're starting to see building blocks to really bring this to reality and releases, right? They are not. All the building blocks are not there on the table. Stay tuned next week and to be and to be an, in fairness for a few of us in the room. And let me ask you something I didn't ask Patrick and should have. What is the security token? Oh, well, a security token is a security. So a registered security traditional security, but in a tokenized form. And Patrick And this gets to the issue that Katie and I were discussing that because it's a registered security, it's also a regulated. Absolutely. Okay, so please continue transitioning totally. Right now, we got involved with liberal for the same reason that we have coin basis. We believe there's a future of an open financial system for billions of people on a global basis. And libras ambitions are very similar to open up financial access through their coins. So we view this as an opportunity to generate awareness. I think by the level of discussion we've all had over the last 48 hours, it is definitely raising awareness and a lot of interest, um, which we think is a net positive to the industry. I think it also is going to show a lot of interest on behalf of global regulators that could then help bring regulatory clarity to it that we've all been seeking lacking. So I think that this was a project that coin baseball was very important for bringing more people and more interest to an asset class that we think has a huge potential. Um, why? First of all, there are no banks so far in the consortium. Um, do you expect that there will be impossible to say I have no independent knowledge? It's possible. And you heard Brad say a moment ago that it's been a that the announcement alone made for a good week a good week for Ripple because of inbound communication. Has there been any impact on coin base and on and on your exchange? Because of this, our products are very different than ripple. And so it hasn't had a direct impact on coin basis business. I would say that it has again the value of huge awareness and more people looking at all of these products and services offered in this space. But not a direct comparison to Ripple. And, uh, a similar version of something. I asked Katie last night. What was the what was the mood earlier this year in Coin base when, um, when the value of Bitcoin had gone down by so much, I assume correct me if I'm wrong. That trading activity also would have declined considerably during that time. Sure, there's obviously morale that occurs when you have cycles, and I came from a hedge fund environment. And I would say the same morale issues occurred in the hedge fund environment that I was in when you had markets up and markets down. So that is universal across volatile asset classes. That being said, what coin base was continually focused on through key one and continues to be is these new developments that we're seeing on the fears of the ecosystem. And so despite price being down, we've never seen more engineering talent going to these net new projects and to development of apps within Cryptocurrency that that generated a lot of excitement and positive morale boost to combat the price, we believe we're going to continue to go through these cycles and every cycle that you see prices up at the trough. So if you track the trough over periods of time, you see this long going trajectory of growth. However no denying it. This is a volatile asset class. Patrick, you told me that you haven't had time to pay much attention to the to the Facebook announcement. Um, given your enthusiasm for the field, I would have thought you would have been very enthusiastic about this. And so, you know, I I know you're busy. Yeah, but what do you think about about Facebook doing this in particular versus others that might have. It's great. We've gone from an $800,000 year diner to Overstock to, uh, Facebook in, uh, since 20 since January 2014. That's I think, in in December 2013, no one would have expected that kind of, uh, curve. And so I'm happy that they are about having studied Liber yet. I, you know, it's an endorsement and a validation that, hey, the $200 million A shareholder's money that we put into getting into this field and building out a bunch of stuff we picked, we picked the fertile place to be earlier today. We had a young entrepreneur from Brexit make a comment that all you really need to do to stay in business as an entrepreneur is raised enough venture capital. And, uh, and and then and then spend that venture capital. Um, one piece of advice for the room on being an entrepreneur, given your entrepreneurial history. Okay, start off. Do your models as carefully as you can figure out how much capital you're going to need, and then cubit and be prepared to kiss 5 to 10 years of your life. Assume you have no family knife for no real emotional private life for 5 to 10 years. Good luck. Uh, words of wisdom from Patrick Burns and Alicia. Thank you so much.