Share this article

VP of Engineering Tim Wagner Becomes Latest Exec to Leave Coinbase

Coinbase is losing three high-ranking engineering staffers, CoinDesk has learned, including VP of engineering Tim Wagner.

0_GoIdBOZjsp3VrpGD

Coinbase executive Tim Wagner is leaving the crypto exchange after slightly over a year on the job. Other high-ranking engineering staffers are leaving too, CoinDesk has learned.

Wagner, Coinbase’s vice president of engineering, will be departing in the next two weeks, a Coinbase spokesperson confirmed. The departure will leave a vacancy on the company’s leadership team.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto for Advisors Newsletter today. See all newsletters

Previously, Wagner served more than six years at Amazon Web Services, making him one of the most senior alums of big tech to join the cryptocurrency industry. Wagner joined shortly after Coinbase acquired Earn.com and made Balaji Srinivasan its chief technology officer.

Wagner is another example of a senior member of the team departing the company in recent months. In May, Coinbase lost both CTO Srinivasan and COO Asiff Hirji. A recent report by The Information exposed tensions between the two men that caused turmoil in the company's executive ranks.

More changes

CoinDesk was also able to confirm three other notable departures at the company outside of the leadership team.

Wagner’s departure follows that of Namrata Ganatra, Coinbase’s now-former senior director of engineering. Ganatra announced yesterday that she’d be joining Lambda School as the education startup’s new CTO.

Coinbase veteran and current engineering director Varun Srinivasan is also leaving, the company confirmed to CoinDesk. After nearly four and a half years at Coinbase, Srinivasan’s departure is in the works but has yet to be finalized.

Facebook alum and Coinbase’s former director of design, Connie Yang, left the company some months ago. She did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.

Coinbase employs roughly 700 people across multiple offices.

Nick Tomaino, an early Coinbase employee who now runs investment firm 1confirmation, says turnover at San Francisco’s crypto unicorn is no big deal.

"Coinbase is a utility for the industry and its success as a company is solely dependent on the success of the cryptocurrency industry as a whole," Tomaino wrote in a message to CoinDesk. "A few exec departures don't matter much in the grand scheme of things."

Tim Wagner (right) with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (photo via Coinbase)

Zack Seward

Zack Seward is CoinDesk’s contributing editor-at-large. Up until July 2022, he served as CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief. Prior to joining CoinDesk in November 2018, he was the editor-in-chief of Technical.ly, a news site focused on local tech communities on the U.S. East Coast. Before that, Seward worked as a reporter covering business and technology for a pair of NPR member stations, WHYY in Philadelphia and WXXI in Rochester, New York. Seward originally hails from San Francisco and went to college at the University of Chicago. He worked at the PBS NewsHour in Washington, D.C., before attending Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Zack Seward
Brady Dale

Brady Dale holds small positions in BTC, WBTC, POOL and ETH.

Picture of CoinDesk author Brady Dale