Coinbase has hired a former deputy director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to lead the exchange’s legal work on capital markets.
Christian Sabella, who departed the SEC on June 2, joins the exchange as its senior director and associate general counsel of the exchange’s capital markets division.
Sabella joins Coinbase at a time when the exchange has been on a recruiting drive, onboarding new hires from some of the world’s largest companies, including Goldman Sachs.
The announcement came via Coinbase’s chief legal officer Paul Grewal on Monday.
Before joining Coinbase, Sabella had worked for the SEC for over a decade, where he initially began as branch chief at the regulator’s Office of Trading Practices, Division of Trading and Markets, per Sabella’s LinkedIn page.
Prior to his appointment at the SEC, Sabella held a role at Shearman & Sterling as a senior associate where he specialized in over-the-counter derivatives and structured financing.