Cindy and I were not friends, exactly. We were acquaintances who had known each other in middle and high school in subur

At the Q3 all hands meeting this past week, I shared with the company the above clarification of our culture and mission. These types of clarifications are needed periodically, as almost every year there will be some sort of event which tests the culture. My goal is to create clarity for all employees going forward about how we’re going to operate. I suspect the vast majority of people will be excited to proceed in this direction — after all, the mission is what we all signed up for and is what Coinbase is uniquely positioned to achieve as a company. But for some employees, working at an activism focused company may be core to what they want, and we want to prompt that conversation with their manager to help them get to a better place. Life is too short to work somewhere that you aren’t excited about, and we’re happy to make that a win-win conversation.,We need to do a better job of being authentic about who we are, and hopefully this blog post is a first step in that direction. We are an intense culture and we are an apolitical culture. We’re also committed to making Coinbase a place that creates incredible job opportunities and a welcoming environment for people of every age, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.,What happens with liver damage is that its many diverse functions become interrupted, causing symptoms in other parts of the body. This may explain why most people never think they have a problem with their liver.,With a strong, united culture, we can build a company that changes the world. At Coinbase, that culture means staying focused on our mission and being the best company we can be. I believe this is how we will have the greatest impact. With this clarity, hopefully everyone can make an informed decision and we can move forward as #OneCoinbase.,Coinbase’s mission is to create an open financial system for the world. This means we want to use cryptocurrency to bring economic freedom to people all over the world. This is difficult and important work, and every employee at Coinbase signed up because they are excited about this mission.,I realized at some point this year that many employees were interpreting our mission in different ways. Some people interpreted the mission more broadly, to include all forms of equality and justice. It makes sense if you believe that economic freedom is not possible without equality for all people. Others interpreted the mission more narrowly, believing that we were trying to create infrastructure for the cryptoeconomy, and that yes, this would create more equality of access for all people, but we weren’t trying to solve all forms of inequality in the world.,I did this on Facebook, where her wisecracking, self-deprecating tone suddenly gave way to a somber third-person announcement that Cindy had been secretly battling chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), a little-known neurological disorder with wide-ranging symptoms.,With a strong, united culture, we can build a company that changes the world. At Coinbase, that culture means staying focused on our mission and being the best company we can be. I believe this is how we will have the greatest impact. With this clarity, hopefully everyone can make an informed decision and we can move forward as #OneCoinbase.,The reason is that while I think these efforts are well intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division. We’ve seen what internal strife at companies like Google and Facebook can do to productivity, and there are many smaller companies who have had their own challenges here. I believe most employees don’t want to work in these divisive environments. They want to work on a winning team that is united and making progress toward an important mission. They want to be respected at work, have a welcoming environment where they can contribute, and have growth opportunities. They want the workplace to be a refuge from the division that is increasingly present in the world.,This country’s central issue is not that all white people are bad, but how whiteness has been the metric to describe normal. Hughes criticized America and told Blackness to stand on differences, hoping we maximize the cultural qualities that make the African-American “African,” not what makes the African-American “American.”,The narrower interpretation is how I intended the mission to be understood. I don’t think companies can succeed trying to do everything. Creating an open financial system for the world is already a hugely ambitious mission, and we could easily spend the next decade or two trying to move the needle on global economic freedom. We will keep building the most trusted and easiest to use financial products that help people access the cryptoeconomy, so everyone can get the benefits of this new technology and we can bring more economic freedom to the world.,Of course, employees should always feel free to advocate around issues of pay, conditions of employment, or violations of law, for instance. Hopefully the above sets some clear guidelines.,I recognize that our approach is not for everyone, and may be controversial. I know that many people may not agree, and some employees may resign. I also know that some of what I’ve written above will be misinterpreted, whether accidentally or on purpose. But I believe it’s the right approach for Coinbase that will set us up for success long term, and I would rather be honest and transparent about that than equivocate and work in a company that is not aligned.,Lastly, it would go against our principles of inclusion and belonging to be more of an activist company on issues outside of our core mission. We have people with many different backgrounds and viewpoints at Coinbase, and even if we all agree that something is a problem, we may not agree on how to actually go solve it. This is where there is a blurry line between moral statements and politics. We could use our work day debating what to do about various unrelated challenges in the world, but that would not be in service of the company or our own interests as employees and shareholders.,Change happens in the world only when a smart, talented, group of people come together to focus on a hard problem for a decade or more. Many companies never stand the test of time, because they decide to dabble in unrelated efforts, and distract and divide their workforce in the process. Paradoxically, by being laser focused on our mission, we will likely have an even greater impact on the world, through our products and growing customer base.