Coinbase names new country director for Ireland

Coinbase is strengthening its European executive-level team as the wider crypto market continues to suffer from the FTX fallout.

Crypto exchange company Coinbase has appointed Cormac Dinan as the country leader for Ireland. He previously worked as a general manager at Crypto.com. Prior to this, he also worked at Deloitte and at Citi.

Dinan is one of four new executives in Europe announced by the company as part of a bid to expand its business in the region.

As well as Dinan in Ireland, the California-headquartered company has also appointed new leaders in Germany, the UK and EMEA.

Michael Schroeder has been named as director of controls in Germany, while Elke Karskens is the new country director in the UK and Patrick Elyas is the new director of market expansion in EMEA.

The new hires follow the appointment of Daniel Seifert, a senior executive from German financial technology company Solarisbank AG, as regional managing director for EMEA last month.

Founded in San Francisco in 2012, Coinbase has grown to become the largest crypto exchange in the US. It earns the majority of its revenue from trading commissions, and the platform chiefly deals in bitcoin and ether cryptocurrencies.

In 2021, Coinbase went public via a direct listing on Nasdaq, marking a watershed moment for the crypto industry. The highly anticipated listing hit the highest of expectations, peaking at a valuation of more than $100bn.

Later that year, it reported quarterly revenues of $1.8bn, a nearly 10-fold increase year on year.

However, the latest European executive-level hiring strategy comes amid uncertain times for the global crypto industry.

In June of this year, the EU agreed on landmark regulation to clean up the “Wild West” of crypto assets. With the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, the EU is looking to become a standard setter in the crypto space.

And most recently, the collapse of FTX, the company run by Sam Bankman Fried, caused widespread shock when it was revealed it owed almost $3.1bn to its top 50 creditors.

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