Exclusive: Coinbase acquires Opyn’s leadership team

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Coinbase has made its sixth acquisition of the year, we’ve exclusively learned.

This time, the publicly-traded company made an acqui-hire, meaning that they’re specifically acquiring Opyn CEO Andrew Leone and its Head of Research, Joe Clark.

“The Opyn team has been building in DeFi since the early days; they were the first DeFi options protocol, the inventors of Power Perpetuals, and the team behind Squeeth. The team brings a rare combination of deep onchain technical expertise, strong understanding of traditional market structure, and hands-on experience building decentralized products from the ground up,” Coinbase said in a blog post.

Opyn was one of the DeFi projects charged by the CFTC in 2023 for allegedly operating an unregistered trading platform. The two settled.

A Coinbase spokesperson explained that they made the talent-only acquisition because the company operates with “a build/buy/partner/invest framework. Each path depends on where we see the most leverage — whether that’s through technology, market presence, or talent. In this case, we were especially impressed by [Leone] and [Clark’s] deep experience building in DeFi and their vision for the future of onchain markets. This is something we’re really excited about and putting a lot of energy towards – and that means having the best talent in every seat working on these efforts. Andrew and Joe bring that talent.”

Leone and Clark will now join the Onchain Markets team, which operates in Coinbase’s institutional organization, to concentrate on Verified pools and other development initiatives focused on the onchain markets offerings.

“From the start, our vision has been to connect the fundamental forces of financial markets. We do this because connected and efficient markets improve the real world by allowing individuals to hedge out things they don’t care about and focus on what they’re good at. That’s what we’re going to do at Coinbase, keep focusing on what we’re good at, building the connective tissue of finance on immutable public ledgers,” Clark told me.

Coinbase’s plans include moving more of its exchange business onchain, something that both Leone and Clark will be aiding.