Coinbase Global Inc.’s former lawyers are landing key legal posts after the biggest US digital-asset trading platform cut staff and prepared for a possible lawsuit from regulators.
Richard “Rick” Estacio, who was on paternity leave when he was among two dozen legal and compliance staffers laid off at Coinbase, said he joined Reddit Inc. on Monday. He’s among “good people previously with Coinbase legal landing in great spots,” he said in an email.
Sumeet Chugani, a former associate general counsel for product at Coinbase, as of May 1 became legal and compliance chief for Cloaked Inc., a privacy app, he said in an email. Hector Ivan Velez, Coinbase’s former associate general counsel for capital markets, has joined Flow Carbon Inc., a carbon-credit cryptocurrency startup backed by WeWork Inc. co-founder Adam Neumann, Velez said in a LinkedIn post last week.
Coinbase is reportedly considering moving its international hub to the United Arab Emirates amid its legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which in March threatened to sue over several of the company’s business lines. Coinbase announced a plan to reduce its staff by 20% in January to help navigate a market slowdown.
Coinbase didn’t respond to a request for comment about its legal group.
Estacio, who announced via LinkedIn his role at Reddit, joined Coinbase last year from JPMorgan Chase & Co. He thanked his former Coinbase colleagues for helping him find a job following his “unexpected layoff.”
He now leads Reddit’s commercial legal department and has reunited at the privately held company with Milana McCullagh, a former veteran of Google’s legal group who went on to serve as a deputy general for product and commercial legal at Coinbase.
Reddit recruited McCullagh in January to be its vice president of legal, a newly created position reporting to the company’s general counsel Benjamin Lee, a spokeswoman said.
Comings and Goings
Chugani, now at Cloaked, praised current Coinbase legal chief Paul Grewal for his “stellar leadership.”
Grewal, Coinbase’s top lawyer since 2020, received almost $7.5 million in total compensation last year, per the company’s most recent proxy statement.
Chugani declined to discuss his time at Coinbase, which he joined in 2021, instead referring to a recent social media post touting his departure.
“It was an honor to be in the trenches with the savviest, most impassioned colleagues on the planet—all towards a single mission,” Chugani said in his LinkedIn message last week.
Velez didn’t respond to a request for comment about his move to Flow. In his own LinkedIn post Velez expressed gratitude for the support he received from former co-workers at Coinbase.
Elizabeth Ralston, a former top lawyer at Bison Trails Co., a blockchain infrastructure startup sold for $450 million to Coinbase in 2021, up until last month was an associate general counsel for Coinbase Cloud.
Ralston has left the company to become general counsel for Turnkey Global Inc., a company started by former Coinbase executives, she said in a LinkedIn post.
Legal Pipeline
Three other former Coinbase lawyers caught up in the company’s recent reduction in force—head of commercial legal and technology transactions C. Renée Gately, senior corporate counsel Lisa Richards, and product counsel David Lappin Wells—have also landed new in-house legal jobs at HackerOne Inc., Navan Inc., and Extreme Networks Inc., respectively.
Coinbase lawyers that departed in prior years have also been in demand.
Marcus Hughes, a former Coinbase executive and international general counsel who exited last year, said via LinkedIn that he joined venture capital firm Sentinel Global as a partner in April.
That same month, Copper Technologies Ltd., a U.K.-based digital asset custodian, promoted former Coinbase associate general counsel Samuel Brown to its top legal role, succeeding Carly Nuzbach Lowery, a former associate general counsel for international at Coinbase.
Maribeth Ann Bushey, a former associate general counsel for litigation at Coinbase who left the company in 2021, was hired for a product and regulatory role in March by software company Aveva Group PLC.
Arkive Museum Collective LP, a startup seeking to create the world’s first decentralized museum, in January hired former Coinbase associate general counsel Deok Keun Ahn as its legal chief.
That same month Eric Weingarten, another former associate general counsel at Coinbase, was named chief legal and compliance officer for identity verification platform Bridge Ventures Inc.
Coinbase, for its part, did hire former Fenwick & West corporate finance and transactions associate Lailey Rezai last month as a senior corporate counsel.