Today, I’m thrilled to announce that Coinbase has acquired Earn.com, and as part of the acquisition, Earn’s co-founder and CEO, Balaji Srinivasan, will join Coinbase as the company’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

Balaji has become one of the most respected technologists in the crypto field and is considered one of the technology industry’s few true originalists. Prior to serving as the CEO at Earn.com, Balaji was a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Before joining a16z, he was the cofounder and CTO of Counsyl, where he won the Wall Street Journal Innovation Award for Medicine and was named to the MIT TR35. Balaji holds a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. He has taught data mining, stats, genomics, and blockchain courses at Stanford, as well as an online MOOC in 2013 which reached 250,000+ students worldwide.

As CTO of Coinbase, Balaji will serve an important role as the technological evangelist for the company. Balaji will evangelize for both crypto and for Coinbase, educating the world and recruiting crypto-first talent to the company.

In addition to welcoming Balaji, we’re also very pleased to welcome the Earn.com team to Coinbase. Earn allows senders to pay users in cryptocurrency to reply to emails and complete tasks. We’re going to be doubling down on the Earn business within Coinbase, as they have built a paid email product that is arguably one of the earliest practical blockchain applications to achieve meaningful traction. You can read more about plans for Earn.com on their blog here.

Balaji and the entire Earn team will have a profound impact on our momentum towards a crypto-first company and culture. We’re so glad they’re here!