Tobias Lütke, the CEO of e-commerce, Shopify, will join Coinbase’s Board of Directors, the company announced. Coinbase, CEO Brian Armstrong praised Lütke’s early support for cryptocurrencies in a blog post, suggesting that Ottawa-based Shopify might play a significant strategic role in the coin’s future.
“Shopify sits at the nexus of three important areas that crypto seeks to revolutionize: Finance and payments, web applications, and the internet itself,” wrote Armstrong.
Shopify and Coinbase have a long history of working together. Coinbase Commerce has long been used by the latter to provide cryptocurrency payment choices to the millions of merchants who use its web-shopping service, including Pepsi and Tesla.
The fact that Lütke has been appointed to Coinbase’s board of directors raises the prospect that the business, which just announced that Mastercard will be accepted for NFT payments, is considering additional retail or shopping operations.
“With his guidance, we hope to unlock crypto’s potential to increase economic freedom in the same way Shopify democratized online commerce,” wrote Armstrong.
However, a source close to Coin Base claims that Lütke’s appointment to the board was influenced in part by his solid relationship with Armstrong and their shared views on keeping politics out of their businesses.
“The concepts of decentralized finance and entrepreneurship exemplify the promise of Web3 where opportunity exists for the many, not the few,” he said in a statement.
Shopify’s interest in crypto is also apparent in the company’s decision to join Facebook’s now-defunct stable coin consortium and its recent announcement that it will allow clients like the NBA’s Chicago Bulls to provide NFT sales.
Coinbase’s Board of Directors will likely confirm Lütke’s nomination soon. If he is confirmed, he will be the board’s eighth member, joining Armstrong, Coinbase co-founder, Fred Ehrsam, and notable venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.
Coinbase appointed executives from Cisco and DoorDash to its board of directors in 2020, as the business looked to obtain more governance experience ahead of its IPO.
On February 25, Coinbase, whose stock recently hit an all-time low, is slated to report earnings.