Julia Rosin
Head of Public Policy at Coinbase & President at ABcripto
Julia, you have built a career spanning more than a decade across government, public policy and technology. Which experience most influenced the way you lead when regulators, companies and users have very different expectations?
It was when I began working directly in government relations at a consultancy called PATRI Políticas Públicas. Before that, my career had been much more closely connected to the public sector, where I had worked in city government and had experience in state government.
The consultancy was the first place where I had to reconcile every possible interest. That is where I learned how different those stakeholders are and how to structure clients’ interests without creating conflicts between them, including when several clients operate in the same sector.
I also learned to think in a genuinely 360-degree way. It is not only about talking to the regulator, but you need to understand how that conversation connects with the media, with the company’s own social-media presence and with other relevant audiences.
When I’m telling you about this, I remember it was an incredible experience. I loved working there, and that was when I decided I wanted to build my career in this field.
But after a while, I wanted to be the person implementing the strategy, not only designing it. That is what took me into the private sector and, specifically, into technology. Consultancies in any field are excellent schools. For me, it was the first moment when I thought, “This really is what I want to do with my life.”
Your path sounds inspiring, but how did it lead you into crypto?
When I left PATRI, I joined one of its clients, a venture-capital company. There, my role was to assess regulatory risk for investments.
For example, when the company was considering investing in a sector, it needed to understand the political and regulatory landscape before deciding whether to commit capital. I also helped smaller portfolio companies build their own government and regulatory affairs functions.
One company that it was evaluating had, among its products, a proposal for Bitcoin-collateralised loans. To support it, I needed to understand what was happening in that market.
This was when Law No. 14,478, now the legal framework for the sector in Brazil, was being discussed. Actually, it was at that exact moment that I truly entered crypto, bought my first crypto assets, and began supporting that team.
As the chair of ABCripto, you personally sit in a more complicated spot while also representing Coinbase. How do you actually keep those two roles from bleeding into each other?
The basic principle is that the association never represents a single company. Our bylaws will not let ABCripto take up an issue unless it interests at least three members, so I could not push something specifically for Coinbase even if I wanted to.
We also have a director of institutional relations, Diego, who handles regulatory matters, and he does not work for Coinbase. If Coinbase's position ever conflicted with the association's, I would not be the one representing ABCripto. For that purpose, we have a vice-president.
That said, Coinbase isn't on the board but a member like any other. In other words, I don't represent Coinbase inside ABCripto — other people from the company do that. We even route whistleblowing to an independent third party, not to me.
I was elected knowing I would hold both roles, so it was never a secret. The regulator always knows which hat I'm wearing, and in both cases I'm accompanied by the relevant team. That transparency is what prevents any perception that I'm using the association to serve a personal interest.
That question of trust and perception feels even sharper on the security side. How can the sector combat illicit activity transparently without reinforcing the idea that crypto is inherently criminal? Where does the industry still need to take greater responsibility?
Reporting across the sector still is not standardised. Because regulation is early-stage, regulators can struggle to see the full scope of each exchange's activity, and there is no single place to check it all yet.
The market's mistake was not presenting itself proactively to law enforcement and taking too long to build common anti-money-laundering standards — every company built its own. As a sector, we ended up waiting for regulation to impose one instead of leading.
That's exactly what we're fixing now. We work with COAF, whose existing system was built for traditional finance and has no real fields for wallet addresses or transaction hashes. This way, we want to report, and report well, so COAF can generate real financial intelligence.
We're also working with the Federal Police on two tracks: education, and joining Projeto Tentáculos for financial-sector intelligence-sharing, a formal agreement still moving through the Ministry of Justice.
With São Paulo's Public Prosecutor's Office, via CyberGAECO, we are currently building a similar agreement with Chainalysis, plus a separate Chainalysis programme training Central Bank staff.
That level of cooperation with the Central Bank and police is a sign that the traditional financial system is taking blockchain seriously too. Are Brazilian banks actually building on this infrastructure, or mostly watching from the sidelines?
All of them are building. There is not a major bank in Brazil today without a blockchain-infrastructure project, particularly in tokenisation.
Bitcoin might have disappeared if nothing had been built on top of that original technology. Instead, people created many different solutions on these networks. When something becomes infrastructure and solves a real deficiency, it doesn't go away.
By that I mean that blockchain offers programmability, transparency and lower costs. For your understanding, in the SWIFT model, settlement can take T+2 or T+4 through several intermediary banks.
I don't say that blockchain will replace them overnight, but it’s still faster and cheaper. So the two models will coexist for a long time, but the infrastructure that solves problems best will endure.
Brazilians adopt technology readily, but people only adopt what they trust, and money is trust. Since the dollar's convertibility into gold ended, currency value has rested on trust in the economy and the structure behind it. Crypto needs to earn that same trust from users and regulators alike.
Very few people can explain how a credit-card payment actually routes through issuers, acquirers and clearing. But they use it because they trust it. That's what crypto still has to build, and it's also what smart contracts and atomic settlement do at a technical level.
You've mentioned earning trust from institutions. But I wanted to shift to who's actually building that trust from inside the industry. Did Women's visibility in crypto grow in Brazil and globally?
There is a curious contradiction that I noticed. Financial markets are very male-dominated, yet several of Brazil's leading representative organisations are led by women. For instance, ABRACAM by Kelly Massaro, Zetta by Fernanda, the tokenisation association by Regina, and FIN, the National Federation of Financial Institutions, by Cristiane Coelho.
But look just below those leadership roles, and men still dominate most teams and decision-making positions. Women are leading and publicly representing the market, without holding leadership positions inside member companies in the same proportion.
As the public face of the sector, women help other women see themselves in those roles and lose some hesitation about entering. It's not an easy environment — Congress, the Senate, ministries, the Central Bank, CVM, and COAF are all still predominantly male, and I'm often the only female and also younger than the room.
So it's a real challenge for female professionals. But women are not only good as the public face. I personally know excellent technical experts, company leaders and developers throughout the ecosystem. To make it more visible, we need to make these environments more inviting.
You describe traditional finance as a fairly closed, male-dominated world. Does crypto and Web3 actually change that, or just relabel it?
Absolutely. This is also a much younger industry. Many people running these companies, including country managers, are young too, and these generations tend to arrive with a more inclusive mindset. Women have lost some hesitation about occupying these spaces, and there is less prejudice in both directions.
Crypto was also born with a strong community culture, and those communities are diverse. They create diverse opportunities, including education projects focused on women in communities like Rocinha. The barrier to entry looks high but often is not. Many developers there are self-taught, and when we designed a certification programme, we realised we could not require a university degree, because some of the most successful people in this space taught themselves.
Crypto communities also live largely online, which removes a physical barrier. That means women can build a connection with the community online first, and bring it into the physical world later.
That online-first community sounds very different from how someone typically starts investing. Do you think women who'd never touched traditional finance are finding it easier to try crypto specifically?
I think I was born a little outspoken, but I've seen many women, including close friends, feel afraid to take a position in male-dominated rooms. When you are younger and surrounded by men, there is pressure to speak less, listen more, and only offer your view quietly. Over time, I understood that shouldn't be the rule. If you know what you're talking about, there is no reason to stay silent.
Early on, I got a lot of advice like "be careful how you speak," plus endless comments on clothing — wear blue or grey, tailored trousers, low shoes, little or no makeup, speak only when asked, save your opinion for after the meeting.
The only way out of those rules is firmness. You also don't need to open up your whole personal life to colleagues. And there is one rule that's no longer unspoken at all — hire other women. Our association, for example, is majority female and will stay that way.
I learned not to be afraid to speak about what I know, and to accept women as they are. The thing is, the women who've reached leadership are exactly the ones who refused to live by those rules.
I'll say what I believe needs saying, wear what I'm comfortable in while respecting the professional context, and I won't let my hair, makeup or style define my competence. That's how we show no one has the right to assume a man's work is automatically better than ours.
Given everything you've just described about learning to unlearn those rules, what would you tell the next generation of women hoping to work in a similar field?
The most important thing, to me, is to know the subject you want to discuss in depth. Once you are secure in your knowledge, it becomes much harder for anyone to hold back your growth and professional development.
My advice to younger women has always been: know what you are talking about, and do not be afraid to speak about a subject you have mastered.
That confidence has to come from technical knowledge and self-awareness — work on your self-esteem and how you communicate. The key word for women's professional development is confidence.
Education, dedication and genuine conviction that you're good at what you do will free you from the fear of building your own career. And, honestly, a lot of therapy, because sometimes we go to therapy to deal with people who need it and don't go.
