NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Centre – the consortium founded by Circle Internet Financial, LLC and Coinbase Global, Inc. to serve as a network governing and standard setting body for blockchain-based financial services – has named Rebecca R. Cohen as its new General Counsel (GC). As GC, Cohen will oversee and advise Centre on legal strategy as the consortium continues to set industry-wide standards for the blockchain industry.
“Emerging financial technologies can bring about tremendous progress when they’re implemented with care. It’s essential that the right-sized controls be put in place to mitigate risk while giving the public full access to the opportunities created by these innovations,” said Rebecca Cohen, Centre’s new GC. “I couldn’t be more excited to join Centre, which is at the forefront of establishing the standards that balance responsible risk-management and innovation in the stablecoin space.”
Rebecca Cohen has fifteen years of experience representing traditional financial institutions in complex cross-border restructuring, financing and litigation matters, as well as cutting-edge emerging growth technology companies. She previously served as General Counsel for the values-driven public safety platform Mark43 and Associate General Counsel for digital currency protocol Worldcoin. Cohen began her legal career in the corporate restructuring department at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and has a law degree from UCLA School of Law.
Cohen has served as a Director of the environmental nonprofit Scenic Hudson, and a charter member of TechGC, an independent community platform for General Counsels of leading venture capital funds and high growth technology companies.
“Rebecca’s career path has been guided by a clear set of values, which are shared by Centre – inclusion, innovation, and excellence,” said David Puth, CEO of Centre. “We’re honored to welcome Rebecca to our team, and look forward to benefiting from her insights as we develop standards to guide future innovation in the blockchain space.”
Cohen joins Centre just after its release of Verite, a decentralized identity solution designed to give people and organizations direct control over how, when, and where their personal information is used when doing business in the crypto economy. The project collaborates with inaugural members Burrata and Notabene as well as key industry players such as Block, FTX, Polygon, and MetaMask on identity standards to accelerate the widespread adoption of crypto payments and decentralized finance.
About Centre
Centre, founded by Circle and Coinbase, is the first independent, open source standards organization with a focus on providing a framework for fully reserved fiat-backed stablecoin issuance based on the principles of transparency and integrity. The first Centre standard stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), has become a leading stablecoin on the market, supporting a fast-growing ecosystem and driving inclusive user growth. USDC now has a market cap greater than $50 billion and has supported over $2.5 trillion on-chain transactions.
