Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal leaves July 31 as Congress prepares a House floor vote on the CLARITY Act, the digital-asset bill he helped shape.
Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal will leave the company on July 31, 2026, ending a six-year tenure that spanned the exchange's most consequential legal fights. His departure lands weeks before a House floor vote on the CLARITY Act, the digital-asset bill he helped shape through two years of lobbying.
Grewal joined Coinbase in 2020 from a federal judgeship. He oversaw the response to the SEC lawsuit that became the industry's defining test case. The agency sued Coinbase in 2023, alleging it operated as an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearing agency. Grewal pushed back in court filings and public testimony, arguing the SEC had no statutory authority over crypto transactions that were not securities. A federal judge largely sided with the SEC in 2024, though the case is still in discovery.
The CLARITY Act, introduced in early 2025, would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission primary oversight of digital-asset spot markets and define most tokens as commodities. Coinbase has been one of the bill's most vocal backers. Grewal testified before the House Financial Services Committee in March 2025, calling the current SEC-led approach "a regulatory dead end." The bill cleared committee markup in April 2026 on a 32-22 vote.
Coinbase said Grewal's departure was a personal decision. He will remain as a senior adviser through the end of 2026. The company has not named a successor. Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad, who joined in 2021 from Goldman Sachs, is expected to take over legislative strategy, two people familiar with the matter said.
Grewal's exit removes the most recognizable legal face of the U.S. crypto industry at a moment when the regulatory path is still uncertain. The CLARITY Act faces opposition from Senate Banking Committee Chair Elizabeth Warren, who has called it a giveaway to crypto exchanges. A companion bill in the Senate has not advanced out of committee.
Coinbase shares were flat in after-hours trading on the announcement.
Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.