Jenna Valle-Riestra

✨ personal news ✨ Jenna Joyce Harper coming soon to email signatures near you 💍

@leomschwartz @theinformation Congrats Leo!! Great run and excited to see all you do at The Information 🎉

Thrilled to share that I'm joining @theinformation in early May! As a longtime (and constantly envious) reader, I can't wait to be part of the team

probably nothing

hill staffer version: you either die in DC or live long enough to see yourself move back to California

@GeorgeNHammond @FT @sjhmorris George this is fantastic! Huge congrats 🎉

Some personal news: I'm stepping up to become the @FT's deputy bureau chief on the West Coast. I'll still be covering venture, the AI boom, and tech talkshow M&A, and still at george.hammond@ft.com or ghammond.33 on Signal Grazie @sjhmorris and wonderful SF team. 🫡

not to sound like a potted plant but sunlight and fresh air really makes a difference

finally, some recognition

@Matt_Schulman1 oh so we've all gone through this huh 😅

I broke into comms by getting really good at finding reporters’ email addresses so my tiny agency didn’t have to pay for Muck Rack

Some people grow out of the middle school gossip phase. Others turn pro and become reporters and comms staffers.

got a lot of messages in the last 24h, some feedback that a lot of people could benefit from: there is no excuse for using passive, indirect language in your writing if you want something, don't just say you want it as with every piece of work, you need to think about it from the audience's POV, and empathise with their situation, needs, etc, and then deliver against that be confident, be compelling, be creative, be attention grabbing, be contextually relevant don't say you want something, make a no-brainer case for why you should have the thing that's impossible to ignore

@AlexOnchain legend

today is my last day as ct lead at coinbase (I'm now the head of social media)

6 more reasons to move back to California

@kaycidot killin it 🙌🏻

Lil announcement - since the beginning of the year, I've started working on Onramps here at Coinbase! We say this all the time as an industry, but onramping (aka buying stablecoins/crypto outside of a centralized exchange) still hasn't been solved. The biggest complaints I usually hear are 2 fold: 1) Still *expensive* -> Why does it cost me $5 + 2% to go from USD -> USDC? 2) The transaction itself just *fails* -> Why are my transactions getting rejected all the time? There's several reasons for why this happens specifically to onramps today, which I'll cover as separate deep dives.

@michael_bodley @AnnicaBenning was gonna ask if you think AI is making it worse! crazy, like takes 5 seconds to check a beat lol

@AnnicaBenning honestly, lower than expected. which is, somehow, more depressing, bc it's then human incompetence!

Dear PR: I am BEGGING you to do basic homework on reporters' beats before pitching. Literally, just SKIM our recent bylines. I used to provide brief feedback on every non-spam PR pitch. That's now impossible, thanks to scattershot, abjectly irrelevant pitches. As much as I'd love to invest in a securitized tranche of trailer parks in Alabama.

you're telling me *this* is the company that built claude code?!

is the $500/hr social media manager in the room with us

Crypto is still early. The real challenge is updating the financial system. A stronger ecosystem increases liquidity, participation, and trust, and that benefits everyone. Had a great time diving into how we're walking the walk at @Coinbase 👇

New episode of High Stakes is live. Alex Nwaka sits down with Aklil Ibssa, Head of Corporate Development at @coinbase . Coinbase was the most active acquirer in crypto in 2025, including the largest acquisition in the industry’s history with Deribit. They dig into how Coinbase is using M&A to accelerate their Everything Exchange, and where Aklil gleans future opportunities. Listen now - youtube.com/watch?v=90SGdM… #Crypto #Web3

stablecoin supply continues to climb even when broader crypto markets pull back in case it isn't obvious, we're all in on driving stablecoin growth @coinbase - coinbase is the distribution engine driving USDC growth, with record balances across Coinbase products (+$17.8B as of end of Q4) - we've developed a vertically integrated stack for stablecoins across issuance, Base L2 (settlement layer), consumer and agentic wallets, and our user-facing products (Coinbase, Prime, Coinbase Business) - coinbase is a platform that supports many stablecoins and serves as a primary liquidity venue and custodian -- well positioned as we see more stablecoins emerge and continued growth in overall supply

@gazza_jenks @TheBlockCo @lawmaster @XBT002 @ForesightVen Stoked for you Gareth!!

Today I start the next chapter of my career! I am incredibly excited to join @TheBlockCo as Head of Multimedia. For the past 14 years, I've worked as a multimedia journalist and broadcaster. I believe in journalistic integrity and ethics. When I spoke to @lawmaster , @XBT002 @Timccopeland earlier this year, I could really feel that was a core part of the DNA of the company. I also got the feeling that The Block was a place I could continue to learn AND help grow from a multimedia perspective. So I decided to go for it! And that is the task ahead of me. I believe The Block is one of the bastions of quality journalism in the cryptocurrency space. Hopefully, I can do my part to solidify that position. If you want to reach out about events, news, leads, content ideas. Drop me an email - gjenkinson@theblock.co. We are going to be doing A LOT across the board from a multimedia perspective. But today is day one, and we have to learn to walk before we can run.