Jill Carlson, Emily Parker: Coinbase's 'Apolitical' Mission Is Hypocritical and Unhelpful

Jill Carlson, Emily Parker: Coinbase’s recent decision to take no position on political and social issues has divided the cryptocurrency industry.

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Coinbase’s recent decision to take no position on political and social issues has divided the cryptocurrency industry.

Some see it as a wise move in a no-win hyper-sensitive political environment.

Others say CEO Brian Armstrong is tone-deaf to cultural forces sweeping the United States and the world.

This week, the debate got material within Coinbase itself, with about 5% of employees choosing to quit and take a severance package, rather than work for a company with a crypto-only mission statement.

This week on Opinionated – our new podcast featuring CoinDesk’s best columnists and contributors – we are joined by Jill Carlson and Emily Parker to discuss the Coinbase controversy and its meaning for the industry and Silicon Valley.

Carlson is an investor with Slow Ventures and co-founder of the Open Money Initiative.

She writes this week that Armstrong, far from creating an environment in which people can work free of distractions, is creating an environment where difficult issues remain unaddressed and people feel not-heard.

Carlson sees Coinbase’s stance cutting off useful debate. “The backlash against cancel culture is not manifesting as advocacy for dialogue, free speech, nuance and tolerance. Rather, the backlash is only driving discourse deeper underground, breeding an even more intense culture of fear and further entrenching intolerance,” she writes.

Parker is CoinDesk’s Global Macro Editor. Her op-ed “Coinbase’s ‘Mission’ Violates the Spirit of Bitcoin” points to what she calls the hypocrisy of Armstrong going apolitical while espousing the values of Bitcoin (including economic freedom and censorship resistance).

“Armstrong would like to have it both ways. He wants to be apolitical about the disruptions that make him uncomfortable, but political about Bitcoin’s mission to disrupt the world,” she writes.

Join us for a lively discussion with two bold and original thinkers.

Opinions featured in this week’s podcast:

Emily Parker – Coinbase’s ‘Mission’ Violates the Spirit of BitcoinandJill Carlson – Reading Between the Lines of Brian Armstrong’s Mission Memo

HOSTS

Emily Spaven

Emily served as CoinDesk's first managing editor from 2013 to 2015.

Emily Parker

Emily Parker was CoinDesk's executive director of global content. Previously, Emily was a member of the Policy Planning staff at the U.S. State Department, where she advised on Internet freedom and digital diplomacy. Emily was a writer/editor at The Wall Street Journal and an editor at The New York Times. She is the co-founder of LongHash, a blockchain startup that focuses on Asian markets.

She is the author of "Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices From the Internet Underground" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The book tells the stories of Internet activists in China, Cuba and Russia. Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, called it "a rigorously researched and reported account that reads like a thriller." She was chief strategy officer at Silicon Valley social media startup Parlio, which was acquired by Quora.

She has done public speaking all over the world, and is currently represented by the Leigh Bureau. She has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC and many other television and radio shows. Her book has been assigned at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Tufts, UCSD and other schools.

Emily speaks Chinese, Japanese, French and Spanish. She graduated with Honors from Brown University and has a Masters from Harvard in East Asian Studies. She holds Bitcoin, Ether and smaller amounts of other cryptocurrencies.

Jill Gunter

Benjamin Schiller

Benjamin Schiller is CoinDesk's managing editor for features and opinion. Previously, he was editor-in-chief at BREAKER Magazine and a staff writer at Fast Company. He holds some ETH, BTC and LINK.