In this episode, Kevin Johnson, Vice President of Sales and Trading at Coinbase, gives us a behind the scenes look at the work he does at Coinbase, and shares how they’re creating economic freedom and building the crypto economy securely on the data cloud. Kevin also talks about how the data cloud has allowed Coinbase to create a new data store for their clients to better index their data and deliver it in a way that fits into their processes cleanly.
In this episode, Kevin Johnson, Vice President of Sales and Trading at Coinbase, gives us a behind the scenes look at the work he does at Coinbase, and shares how they’re creating economic freedom and building the crypto economy securely on the data cloud. Kevin also talks about how the data cloud has allowed Coinbase to create a new data store for their clients to better index their data and deliver it in a way that fits into their processes cleanly.
[00:00:00] Producer: Hello and welcome to the Data Cloud Podcast. Today's episode features an interview with Kevin Johnson, vice President of Sales and trading at Coinbase. After starting his career as an analyst, Kevin had several management positions at hedge funds, which led him to be in COO of the crypto startup to Tagomi, Which was acquired by Coinbase in 2020. In this episode, Kevin talks about the relationship between crypto and the data cloud, how data sharing within financial institutions has evolved, how to build a great team and much more. So please enjoy this interview between Kevin Johnson and today's special guest host, Ryan Green.
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[00:01:24] Ryan Green: Hello everyone, I'm Ryan Green, anchor of Data Cloud now, and I'll be filling in for Steve Hamm for this episode. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Data Cloud podcast. I'm delighted to introduce today's featured guest, Kevin Johnson, who is VP of Institutional Sales and Trading for Coinbase.
Kevin, thank you so much for joining me on the
[00:01:47] Kevin Johnson: podcast today. Thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:49] Ryan Green: Kevin. Just start with, many of our listeners may be familiar with Coinbase as a company within. The crypto industry, but may not be as aware of exactly what the company does. Can you share a bit about Coinbase and your role at the company for the audience listening?
[00:02:09] Kevin Johnson: Yeah, I'd love to. So most people are probably familiar with Coinbase retail platform. It's the largest and most trusted crypto exchange in the United States, but we also have two other businesses. That have been growing rapidly that we're both really excited about. We have our institutional business, which provides trading and custody services for some of the largest investment managers on the planet, and this is really our way of giving those types of investment firms and, and, and managers access to the crypto economy.
We also have our developer business, which provides fantastic tools for other companies to build their own. Businesses on crypto. We've taken a lot of the fantastic technology that we've built along the way for ourselves and packaged it up in a way that other people can build on top of, you know, including things like wallet services, staking services, everything you would need to roll your own crypto company.
[00:03:03] Ryan Green: You know, Kevin, great to have the overview of Coinbase. How about from, from your lens, you know, a little bit personal about yourself before we jump in.
[00:03:11] Kevin Johnson: Yeah, so I, I've worked in finance for over 18 years now. I started off as a developer and, and data analyst, you know, working at a number of hedge funds like Citadel, two Sigma and gco.
And then over time I found my way to a crypto startup called Tagomi, which was one of the first prime brokers in crypto. There I was the coo. And then we actually got bought by Coinbase back in 2020, and it was that acquisition and a number of other key hires that Coinbase made that. Really created the foundation for our institutional business that we have today, you know?
Thanks,
[00:03:43] Ryan Green: Kevin, for your insights. Great to have a baseline. Let's pivot slightly and focus on Coinbase transition to the data cloud. How has your transition to the data cloud help achieve your goal of building the crypto economy? A more fair, accessible, efficient, and transparent financial system enabled
[00:04:04] Kevin Johnson: by crypto.
That's a great question. We're, we're really out to improve economic freedom on the planet, and, and we do this in a number of different ways, you know, by giving people access to all the services we provide and, and what that often means in some cases is helping either institutions or enterprises or other companies interact with the crypto ecosystem.
That's what our institutional business does, that's what our developer business does. And one of the ways we do that is by providing data and other infrastructure to those companies so they can, for example, get access to our exchange data, our pricing data, all that telemetry that's coming out of the system so that people know, you know, what are the current prices of different, you know, cryptocurrencies on one of the most liquid exchanges in the us.
We do that through our APIs. You know, we do that through nodes and other things that we can provide. But we've started using other mediums like the data cloud. To provide a new vector to deliver this information to our clients because we find that different types of clients really want to ingest this data in different ways.
Some are very concerned about sort of the real time aspect of the data, but others are much more interested in data analysis, historical research, looking for patterns and trends over that data over a long period of time. And I think what people realize is that, you know, realtime APIs don't serve that need very well.
It's very difficult to, for example, Pull down a lot of historical data in one call from an api or in some cases, and this is unique to crypto and and blockchain nodes, it's often very difficult to analyze historic data on that node because oftentimes there aren't good things like indices or the data's not normalized across different types of blockchains.
And so things like the data cloud have allowed us to create a new data store for our clients. So, Do a lot of normalization and indexing on that data and then deliver it in a way that they're used to using, that their data analysts and researchers, uh, already have as part of their workbench and really fits into their process cleanly.
So, You know, Kevin, I
[00:05:59] Ryan Green: love that you mentioned, you know, the broader ecosystem and and types of clients, you know, are you able to share what types of clients you're working with in the data cloud ecosystem and what the response
[00:06:11] Kevin Johnson: been like? Yeah, absolutely. So w we work with a very diverse set of clients in our institutional and developer businesses, a lot of whom you'd expect.
You know, we work with large financial institutions, trading firms, hedge funds, other exchanges. But we also work with, you know, different types of corporations or app developers or DAP developers, people that need to use that blockchain data for some other purpose. It might be historic pricing data, but it also might be historic information about blockchain transactions.
Or maybe they're working with NFTs and they wanna show, you know, ownership of NFTs over time. Those types of queries and historical analysis can be provided by that historic data that we can deliver through Snowflake. You know,
[00:06:51] Ryan Green: Kevin, I want to dive into a very important topic and, and that's mutual sharing of data, you know, with traditional financial institutions, you know, what opportunities will this bring and how will it have a positive impact, not only on the broader industry, but the general public as well,
[00:07:07] Kevin Johnson: Kevin?
Yeah. It's really all about bringing new institutions and companies into this space. You know, we're, when we're, when we want to create economic freedom and build the crypto economy. We need more participants to be able to interact safely with it. That starts with things like trading. You know, it moves on to things like market data, but on chain data and being able to see what's happening on the blockchain in real time.
So, And with a trusted interface, with a convenient platform is really important. I think that's what's been holding up a lot of other companies from getting into space. It's a complicated industry. There's a lot of nuances and, and Coinbase is here to help companies through that journey. And we love using common tool sets you that they're already used to using in order to deliver that information.
You
[00:07:49] Ryan Green: know? Great to have your perspective o on the data cloud, Kevin. Now I want to focus, you know, Industry-wide, you know, macro trends and, and really bring it home. For Coinbase specifically, you know, Coinbase recently celebrated their 10th anniversary of founding. You know, you mentioned you joined in 2020 and Coinbase went public in 2021.
You know, as you reflect on these past three years, what have been the biggest changes that you've seen in your role?
[00:08:16] Kevin Johnson: It's really been the growth of the institutional business, I would say. Bringing in more sophisticated participants to this industry and then giving them the tools that they need to trade in larger sizes, you know, to route orders across multiple exchanges, to be able to have a safe and secure place to custody their crypto in a regulated fashion.
Those are all sort of table stakes for investment managers and, and hedge funds and other investors in this space to come into this asset class. So what we've been able to do is build out over time more and more of those tools. To bring more of them into the ecosystem. And every year, every month we're building new things that get a new tranche of people into the space.
And, and lately a lot of that innovation has been on the developer side. You know, other people that are building their own crypto tools that just need help. You know, they don't want to have to build everything from scratch themselves. They wanna lean on the APIs that we have. The things that we can provide from a wallet standpoint, it, it means they don't have to go build everything from scratch.
And, and so I think the more we can do to help people along that journey to kickstart their, their actions in crypto, you know, it'll continue to grow faster. We've been through a number of cycles and in the crypto ecosystem over the last 10 years, and, and we're at a point now where. Even. Even though recent market turmoil, you know, has, has caused a dip in prices, I think what you're seeing is there's a lot of building going on and we still see a strong interest from all these firms that have been working with us, knowing that they need to get ready.
For that next, next cycle, they need to be ready with their systems, with their applications that they're building. They can't do it. After it happens, it would be too late. So we're excited to work with all the builders now to get all the systems in place. Listen,
[00:10:02] Ryan Green: Kevin, to your point, it's all happening in real time.
You know, there, there's no time to wait to, to your point, you know, great to have your perspective from your individual lens on the, on the last couple years, I think, you know, which direction I'm going next, and focusing on the present time and what industry trends are, are top of mind for you as you look in present time, but also look over the next, you know, let's say five plus
[00:10:26] Kevin Johnson: years.
Yeah, that's a great question. I, I would say, you know, new use cases for NFTs are really exciting. You know, everyone's been. Looking for new uses for, for crypto and blockchain based systems. Things like NFTs have really proven to be very interesting for a number of different things. Most people know them as.
You know, artwork or profile pictures. But the reality is that NFTs could be concert tickets. You know, they could be membership cards, they can be, you know, merit badges of sorts for things that you've participated in. And, and so I think as people create new use cases, you know, maybe eventually your driver's license or your car title might be an N F T, you know, those use cases are what people are creating.
They need tools to get that data, to analyze it and to distribute it in whatever applications they're building. And that's what's gonna create new use cases for crypto as a tool to solve different types of problems.
[00:11:19] Ryan Green: You know, I, I want to keep this, this forward looking trend. If, if you don't mind, Kevin, you know, when you look out over the next several months to years, you know, you, you've talked about it a little bit, you know, how will data continue to play a crucial role in crypto?
And now to pull it back to the audience listening and, and specifically the executives, what should they be doing now in order to be successful down
[00:11:41] Kevin Johnson: the line? Yeah, that's a really great point. You know, we're seeing, you know, not only more layer ones come to market, but also layer two networks come to market.
So each of those chains is gonna have data that you're going to want to connect to and analyze and interface with. And when you think about, you know, each sort of marginal bit of work you'd have to do there, it it's a lot. And it can be a lot for a company that wants to get into this space to, to have to build all of that on their own.
You know, so that's where we can help consolidate that, we can help normalize that data so that companies can focus on. Just the part that they want to build, their particular piece of value that they want to add without having to start from scratch, from all of those things. So we're really excited to talk to companies and understand what their goals are, what do they want to do, and where could they use help And, and we love putting together packages of solutions across all of our business lines.
You know, usually a combination of trading and custody. Plus developer tools, depending on what the client is doing. We love packaging those things together to give them a headstart, and companies really find that we are really the best trusted counterparty to help them on that journey. We've been around a long time.
We have, you know, really great partners that we've worked with in the industry and, and we've landed some of the, you know, the most discerning clients in the space. Clients like BlackRock, you know, have have been fantastic partners with us and really, and really, you know, did great diligence on us and have really proven out our capability to service those large discerning clients.
So,
[00:13:11] Ryan Green: You know, and, and to your point, Kevin, you know, every, every client, every customer is unique and being able to adapt to, to exactly what they're looking for.
[00:13:23] Kevin Johnson: So your information, there's a lot more to ogers and people think really need to dig deep and get to know the real youth
[00:13:30] Producer: and the real up close and personal.
[00:13:34] Ryan Green: Now it's time, uh, for us to get a little personal. Kevin, if you don't mind, and. You know, we, we've talked about various journeys throughout this, this conversation, and now I want to pivot it back to you individually. You know, you entered the, the crypto business back in, in 2018. I have to ask, what intrigued you about this industry and why did you want to get involved in the first place?
[00:13:55] Kevin Johnson: So, not a lot of people know this, but I was actually a pretty big crypto skeptic back in, you know, 20 16, 20 17. Kevin, I feel like
[00:14:02] Ryan Green: you've come, come full
[00:14:03] Kevin Johnson: circle here. I I, I, I really have. And you know, what happened was I was at, you know, various trading firms that were thinking about getting into crypto, and, and I was quite skeptical.
And, and what happened was I really had to challenge myself to say, if you're gonna, you know, be against something, you should understand how it works to be able to explain your viewpoint. What I found was that, The more I learned about it, the more I dug into the technology and how it's really the intersection of interesting technology, you know, interesting financial mechanisms, you know, a little bit of game theory.
It really intrigued me just from an academic standpoint, and the more I learned, the more excited I got it. It became, you know, a, a pretty big hobby of mine. I, I began mining Ethereum in my basement. I was heating my house with the heat from 30 different GPUs in my basement. And the more I learned about it, the more I said, gee, it'd be really great to.
You kinda make this my career. And I had a great opportunity then in 2018 to join a crypto startup, you know, to Tagomi was one of the first crypto prime brokers in the space. And it was a perfect blending of my, my background in finance, my work as a developer and my newfound interest in crypto. I, I effectively got to make my hobby my job, which was, which was a really, really great opportunity for me.
And that ended up getting, getting me the job at Coinbase once we were acquired in, in 2020. You know,
[00:15:20] Ryan Green: Kevin, you've completely lit up about your journey, so it's great to see your facial features. I know the audience, we we're audio, but, you know, I love seeing, you know, you reflect on your, your personal journey, you know, to be successful in today's hyper competitive landscape.
You know, Kevin, you need a great team and I want to dive into, you know, your overall philosophies and how you go about. Building a world-class team. You know, I'm sure the audience is eager to find out what attributes are most important to you when it comes to hiring such a diverse
[00:15:51] Kevin Johnson: and global team. Yeah.
We have a challenge at Coinbase in that we, we need top performers and their disciplines, whether they're, you know, traders, developers, salespeople, but in addition to being good at their craft, they also really have to have a, not only an understanding, but a real desire to work in crypto because this is a challenging industry.
You have to, you have to spend your time researching and keeping up with trends, understanding how systems work. You have to understand the nuances of the product that we're working with in order to be able to be a successful developer or researcher or salesperson. And so we have to find people that have both the raw skills, but also just the desire to be in this particular industry.
This is not a place for people to coast or for people just to do, you know, sort of a day job. You really have to be excited about. The journey that we're on as a company and our, and our mission and, and so finding both is, is probably our biggest challenge, you know? But I really love to do that. I love to see people, you know, come into this industry or they learn a little bit about it.
They get hooked like I did. And then to see them continuously learn on the job, asking questions, learning about new protocols, learning about new features. So we look for those that continuous learning as well. In addition to the other things I mentioned. So it, it's a challenge from a hiring standpoint, but when you, when you find those people that meet all of those, uh, requirements, you form a really great team.
You know,
[00:17:14] Ryan Green: Kevin, I, I appreciate the, the personal insights. You know, it's deep. You can tell from, from your perspective, it's deeply personal. Um, you know, now it's time to ask a question that I absolutely. Uh, love asking and it's another shocker, it's another reflection question on your career. Um, you know, what advice would you have given your younger self?
Uh, in retrospect,
[00:17:37] Kevin Johnson: I. Yeah, so I, I, I came up as a developer and as been more of a data analyst. You know, I think junior people in those roles, they often really want to move, move up the ranks and, and move into management roles or project management roles, and that's a fantastic career path. And I, and I have no, no regrets about the path that I took.
One thing I wish I would've done more of along the way is really everyone should make sure they, they pull along all those technical and analytical skills they have. Because you know, no matter how senior you get at a firm, Or what your, you know, ultimate responsibility is being able to bang out a SQL query and answer a question or challenge some raw source data or, or get info on your own is, is very, very valuable.
So keeping those types of skills sharp, being able to keep up with technology, you know, understand what are the latest tools for doing, you know, the job that you might have done 10 years ago. People kind of laugh at me when I say. You know, I was really, really good at Pearl, you know, 15 years ago. They say, what's Pearl?
Um, you know, so, so me understanding, you know, Python and the current tools that people use is, is still really important. So keeping those, those technical and analytical skills sharp along your career, uh, I think is something, you know, that everyone could really benefit from doing. You
[00:18:50] Ryan Green: know, Kevin, and in your specific case, two extremely important.
You know, attributes, attributes, both data literacy, but also financial literacy. And I think, you know, having the, the knowledge base on both of those are, are extremely important. So thank you for, for reflecting on the past. You know, it's been an absolute pleasure sitting down with you, Kevin. You know, in conclusion I have to ask what's next for Coinbase and how can the audience
[00:19:16] Kevin Johnson: learn more?
Yeah, well, we're excited to keep working with new companies and, and helping them, you know, get access to all of our systems and information and, and really participate. In, in the crypto economy, you know, anybody can always learn more about our data offerings by checking out data.coinbase.com. There you can see all the data sets that we provide and, and links to contact our sales team if they want to get something custom.
And then developers can always check out cloud.coinbase.com to see all of our toolkits, APIs and all the, all the things that you can use to build your own crypto applications. We're really excited to work with, with people on, on both fronts. Kevin,
[00:19:52] Ryan Green: really appreciate the
[00:19:54] Kevin Johnson: time today. Thanks for having me.
[00:19:55] Ryan Green: To our audience listening, thank you for joining us on the Data Cloud podcast. I'm Ryan Green. We'll see you soon.
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