Kings of Crypto

12

Coinbase Crackup

Nathalie’s finger hovered over the “send” button. As Coinbase’s longtime HR maven, she had written the email weeks earlier, and desperately hoped it would stay in her draft folder forever. But the bomb threat Coinbase had received that morning was more chilling and more credible than any of the previous ones. She stared at the ominous all-caps email telling the entire staff to flee the building but stay calm. Should she hit send? She had to decide.

As she sat at her desk in Coinbase’s spacious open office high above San Francisco, Nathalie wondered just when the company had changed. Since joining the company as chief of staff at the ramshackle Bluxome Street apartment three years ago, she had risen to director and was on her ...