Coinbase is getting wonky with prominent names in national security from both sides of the U.S. political divide. They will join former lawmakers and other strategists.
Coinbase has expanded its Global Advisory Council with four national security experts, it announced on Nov. 7. The new members will help the cryptocurrency exchange assess the impact of regulatory uncertainty in the United States, it said.
The Coinbase council will take on a decidedly more strategic tone with the new members. Mark Esper is a former U.S. secretary of defense. Stephanie Murphy is a former congressperson and a national security expert. Frances Townsend was homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush. David Urban is a former managing director of BRG Group.
The new council members will be joining former U.S. legislators Patrick Toomey, Tim Ryan and Sean Patrick Maloney. In addition to them, the original members of the council include Haun Ventures chief strategy officer Chris Lehane and Impact Research Polling founder John Anzalone.
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The Global Advisory Council was set up in May as the third advisory council at Coinbase. The others are concerned with asset management and regulation. Among their members are former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Jay Clayton and former CIA general counsel Courtney Elwood. All of the councils have a bipartisan composition.
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The stated goal of the new appointments was “examin[ing] what consequences will result from regulatory uncertainty for crypto in the United States.” Coinbase clearly had an international perspective in mind. It linked its white paper “Defending American Leadership: The National Security Case for Crypto and Blockchain” in the announcement.
Despite an ongoing dispute with the SEC, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has stated his commitment to keeping the San Francisco-based exchange in the country, even as the crypto industry is possibly moving away from the United States. At the same time, Coinbase has stepped up its activities abroad. Those efforts have not always proceeded entirely smoothly, however, as was recently seen in Kazakhstan.
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