David Marcus leaves Coinbase's board to focus on Facebook's blockchain effort

Facebook vice president David Marcus is leaving his board position at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to focus more on his new role leading Facebook's blockchain strategy.

He became a member of the Coinbase board in December of 2017, presumably to expand his connections and knowledge in the crypto field. It is an area Facebook is expected to consider in tandem with any advancement in blockchain, which likely led Marcus to consider his role on the Coinbase board as a potential conflict of interest.

Facebook in May placed Marcus in charge of a blockchain initiative, which would likely include some of the same work that is taking place at Coinbase.

Marcus left his job as PayPal president four years ago to become the leader of Facebook's mobile plans, particularly payments through the iMessage platform. During his two years as president at PayPal, Marcus was credited with improving the company's standing with application developers and helping land the acquisition of Braintree.

His role at Facebook has helped the company extend its messaging platform and begin probing other data and payments technologies.

In reporting the decision to step down from Coinbase, the CoinDesk news site reported Marcus is leaving that role less than a month after Facebook exempted Coinbase from its blanket ban on cryptocurrency-related advertisements.

Marcus became part of the PayPal family in 2011 when PayPal purchased Zong, a mobile payments company Marcus founded. Before becoming president of PayPal, he was its vice president of mobile for a year.