From Coinbase to OpenAI: When lobbying experts start to flee crypto

Original Author: Ada, Deep Tide TechFlow

In the early hours of April 14, CoinDesk posted a personnel news item in an inconspicuous spot.

Tom Duff Gordon, Vice President of International Policy at Coinbase, left to join OpenAI as the EMEA Policy Director.

This news lingered in the trending topics of the crypto circle on Twitter for less than half a day. Compared to the news on the same day that a major XRP holder dumped over $100 million worth of assets on Coinbase, it seemed too quiet.

But sometimes, quiet news is what truly deserves to be read.

Because it signals that a certain type of person is starting to move.

Why leave?

Looking at Gordon's resume, the information is much richer than the few hundred words in CoinDesk's article.

He spent eight and a half years at Credit Suisse. Then he worked at Coinbase for four years before recently moving to OpenAI. From traditional finance to crypto, and then to AI. Each job change coincided with a new turning point in the industry curve.

Gordon joined Coinbase around 2021, when MiCA was just beginning to be drafted in Brussels, the UK's FCA's crypto asset registration system had just started, and the entire Europe had a blank slate on how to regulate "digital assets." Coinbase needed someone who understood investment banking compliance and could enjoy afternoon tea in the City of London to clarify this blank slate step by step.

Gordon was the right choice. He frequently dealt with regulators at Credit Suisse, and his client habits, tone, and pace were consistent.

Leaving Coinbase to join OpenAI in April 2026 was also not a random choice.

The EU AI Act had just been implemented, the first batch of penalty cases had not yet emerged, and the local execution rules of various countries were still being negotiated. Although former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and former Chancellor George Osborne were no longer key figures in politics, their contact lists were still useful, and the people using those contacts were changing tracks.

Gordon left at this time because the policy war at Coinbase had already concluded.

In 2023, the SEC sued Coinbase for operating an unregistered securities exchange, in 2024 the U.S. Third Circuit Court accepted the appeal, and on January 21, 2025, the new SEC established a crypto working group, followed by the SEC dropping the lawsuit on February 27, 2025.

It took two years to go from the harshest regulatory opponent to a handshake.

Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal wrote in a company blog in January 2026 that 2025 was a "milestone year" for Coinbase's market operations. In other words, the main battlefield of the policy war was no longer in the U.S.

The European front that Gordon was responsible for was also wrapping up. MiCA would come into effect in phases by the end of 2024, and 2025 would be the execution period for major exchanges to obtain licenses and local registrations. This was the work of compliance lawyers and localization teams, not the domain of a vice president-level policy lobbying expert.

The value of a policy lobbyist is highest during a regulatory vacuum but drops sharply during the implementation phase.

Gordon is not an isolated case. People in Coinbase's policy and legal lines have been leaving one after another over the past two years. During the 20% layoffs in 2023, at least twenty people from the legal compliance line were cut. Those who left in the past two years were at higher levels, and most were not laid off but left voluntarily.

The reason for leaving voluntarily is not a secret in the circle, as alpha returns have disappeared.

During the regulatory vacuum from 2021 to 2024, a policy expert who understood crypto was equivalent to someone who could write memos for exchanges, VCs, issuers, and project parties simultaneously. A simple line in an email saying "I spoke with the FCA yesterday" could lead to a round of financing or a collaboration.

But today, that line is no longer valuable. The FCA's stance is public information, EU regulatory agencies hold press conferences weekly, and the information asymmetry in crypto compliance has been flattened.

On the AI side, the information asymmetry is at its peak.

Replicating Coinbase

In October 2024, OpenAI tweeted that it would open new offices in New York, Seattle, Paris, Brussels, and Singapore. On April 13, 2026, the day before Gordon's departure news was released, OpenAI announced further expansion of its London branch, positioning London as one of the most important hubs outside the U.S.

When these two pieces of news are viewed together, the script becomes clear.

Currently, OpenAI's recruitment page has the position of EMEA Global Affairs Director listed for over six months, requiring "15 years of experience in government, international affairs, and technology policy," and explicitly stating the need to "establish credibility and a network of relationships with EU institutions and regulatory bodies, and governments."

Gordon's resume perfectly matches this job description.

According to an earlier report by the Financial Times, OpenAI plans to expand its workforce from 4,500 to 8,000 by the end of 2026, averaging 12 new hires per day. Policy and government affairs are one of the key focus areas. In January of this year, OpenAI officially announced the "OpenAI for Europe" initiative, aiming to include education, healthcare, cybersecurity, and disaster response in its lobbying efforts.

The implication of this statement is that OpenAI's goals in Europe are not just to sell enterprise versions of ChatGPT, but to delve into every area that could potentially be legislated, preparing the groundwork in advance.

In 2021, Coinbase was doing the same thing in Europe.

Only this time, the focus is on crypto, and now it is on general artificial intelligence.

Gordon's Value

There is a saying in the crypto circle called "regulatory arbitrage." It means taking advantage of regulatory differences across regions, fields, and time points to find gaps in the rules and turn arbitrage opportunities into business.

Binance was registered in Malta, FTX chose the Bahamas, and Tether ran to the British Virgin Islands, all textbook examples of regulatory arbitrage.

Behind this business of regulatory arbitrage, there is a hidden profession: the lobbyists behind the arbitrageurs.

They do not directly engage in arbitrage; they translate "gaps" into "compliance narratives." They translate the actual operations of an exchange into language that regulators can accept; they translate a regulator's concerns into business compromises that the company can accept.

This work requires three things: first, muscle memory of the internal decision-making processes of regulatory agencies; second, technical understanding of the industry; and third, connections.

People like Gordon sell these three things.

Technical understanding is actually the least valuable of the three. Crypto and AI have no intersection at the underlying technology level, but that is not important; they do not need to understand technology. What they need to know is which officials are sensitive to which issues, which legislators are up for re-election this year, and what the president of which industry association will say at a summit next month.

This knowledge is highly transferable between the fields of crypto and AI. The people in the EU responsible for drafting MiCA are today drafting the local implementation rules for the AI Act.

In other words, the things Gordon needs to relearn when leaving Coinbase for OpenAI are far fewer than most people imagine.

The real value lies in the hundreds of numbers in his phone contacts that will not show up on LinkedIn.

Coinbase still needs policy talent today. But it needs localization compliance managers, execution roles that can implement MiCA clause by clause, and litigation lawyers who can handle the kind of closing lawsuits from a second SEC investigation.

It no longer needs a vice president-level public relations lobbyist who drinks with top politicians in Brussels, London, and Paris.

This is not just the situation for Coinbase. Look at the current market conditions in the crypto industry: Circle has fallen from a peak of $298 after going public to $98, Bullish has dropped from $118 to $38, Kraken has secretly filed but its IPO plan is currently on hold; from the private equity secondary market prices, the market's valuation expectations have fallen below the previous round's $20 billion financing valuation. BitGo's stock price has given back all gains from its first trading day and has fallen below the IPO issuance price by the third trading day.

When the valuation logic of an industry shifts from "narrative premium" to "cash flow discount," its talent demand will also shift accordingly.

The narrative premium period in the crypto industry likely lasted from 2020 to 2025. During these five years, a vice president who understood regulation could simultaneously be a commercial asset, public relations asset, and financing asset.

But now that the cash flow discount period has arrived, such positions have been replaced by financial directors, operations directors, and compliance directors.

The kind of work that involves "going to Brussels to bring back a blank sheet of paper to color" is no longer needed in crypto.

The Direction of the Tide

Gordon's move to OpenAI is a leap into a larger, more chaotic battlefield with a bigger budget, but with less clear red lines.

The EU AI Act began its implementation phase this year, but the specific interpretations of the General Purpose Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) provisions are still being negotiated among countries. The UK still does not have a dedicated AI legislation, and it is unknown whether the FCA's "principle-based regulation" will be reused in the AI field. Several sovereign funds in the Middle East are pouring money into building data centers while considering AI industrial policies. Data sovereignty issues in Africa are becoming the next topic for trade negotiations.

This chaos poses risks for regulatory agencies but presents opportunities for policy lobbyists.

OpenAI's offer to people like Gordon is roughly 1.5 to 2 times that of equivalent positions at Coinbase, including early equity.

This does not even account for the most valuable part. The most valuable part is that entering now, if OpenAI goes public or continues to expand its private valuation, the RSUs you hold at the current valuation are like a lottery ticket.

This kind of lottery ticket was issued at Coinbase in 2021. It was issued at Google in 2013. It was issued at Yahoo in 1999.

At each peak of technological narratives, there will be a group of people who understand the rules best and can tell the best stories who get on board first. By the time the bus reaches the final stop, they have already gotten off to chase the next one.

In a sense, to determine whether an industry is at its peak or at its base, you do not need to look at coin prices, TVL, or financing amounts. Just look at one thing: whether the smartest lobbyists are coming in or going out.

The year Gordon joined Coinbase was 2021.

The year Gordon left Coinbase was 2026.

These five years in between mark the lifespan of this crypto cycle.