Derrick Ochago
I build regulated distribution in hard markets.
I lead Africa expansion for Base, Coinbase's Layer 2, turning stablecoin, wallet, exchange, and partner ecosystems into usable market infrastructure across 30+ markets.
Before Coinbase, I spent a decade building regulated market-entry systems for companies shaping the future of finance.
Thesis
My work sits where stablecoins, crypto, payments, marketplaces, and applied AI meet regulation, trust, and distribution.
Products don't scale through product alone.
- →Stablecoins need corridors, liquidity, and regulatory sequencing.
- →Prediction markets need compliant distribution and trusted market access.
- →AI agents need workflow adoption and controlled deployment.
- →Marketplaces need payments, trust, and local operating rails.
- →Fintech platforms need partners who can move across fragmented regulation.
I build the operating layer between product, regulation, distribution, and trust.
Operating Proof
Coinbase. I lead Coinbase's Africa expansion across 30+ markets, owning the exchange, wallet, stablecoin, developer, and regional partner network that adoption runs on. It consolidates a decade of fragmented market-entry work into a single continent-wide mandate.
Binance. I built one of Africa's first fiat-to-crypto gateways from the ground up, aligning product, payment partners, KYC, local operators, and regulators who had no framework for what we were doing. The compliance playbook I wrote became the regional template.
Bitget. I took Africa from zero to category leadership, building the partner distribution, local payment integrations, and community-led liquidity that turned a non-presence into one of the region's strongest exchange footprints.
Bolt. I was the first local hire in Kampala and launched Bolt Boda, the company's first motorbike service anywhere in the world. I built the market-entry and local payment partnerships from nothing, and learned that distribution is trust before it is technology.
Beliefs
Distribution beats product in hard markets.
In regulated, fragmented markets the product is only the starting point. Trust, access, compliance, liquidity, payment rails, and local distribution decide scale.
Africa is not one market.
54 countries, 54 regulators, 54 currency dynamics, and thousands of local trust networks. Anyone who treats it as one usually fails before they understand why.
Regulation is part of market design.
It isn't a legal blocker bolted on at the end. It shapes sequencing, partner selection, KYC, launch strategy, and long-term trust.
In low-trust markets, distribution is trust.
Local operators, agents, merchants, and community leaders aren't just marketing channels. They're trust infrastructure.
Mobile money is the rail, not a feature.
In much of Africa it is the financial system. Build for cards as the default and you've already lost.
AI agents change distribution math.
Not just productivity. It changes how small teams enter markets, run workflows, serve customers, and build trust at scale.
Children imitate, they don't take instruction.
I think about the world my kids will inherit, one where access to money, work, and opportunity shouldn't depend on where you were born. That's why I keep returning to infrastructure: the systems that make complex products trusted, usable, and reachable.
Builds
Small systems, agents, and workflows I've built to understand what changes when AI becomes operational.
- →Africa Radar Hub. Live market-intelligence system tracking AI, fintech, crypto, and policy signals across African enterprise sectors. TanStack Start + Parallel Search + Gemini. africaradar.hub
- →AI Podcast Co-Host. Real-time, multi-participant AI agent on LiveKit, ElevenLabs, and Claude. Sub-second round-trip latency. github.com/deriqsocial/ai-podcast-agent
- →Gilfoyle. Personal AI operating assistant on Claude, with custom MCP integrations and n8n automation. Daily driver.
- →Base BD Stack. Internal BD engine: Claude + MCP research subroutines, a lead-scoring agent, and a personalized outreach generator that compressed the regional team's lead-to-meeting time by 60%.
- →x-bookmarks-to-obsidian. Daily pipeline turning saved X bookmarks into a structured, searchable Obsidian knowledge base via Claude and GitHub Actions. github.com/deriqsocial/x-bookmarks-to-obsidian
Writing
Essays on regulated markets, stablecoins, crypto infrastructure, AI adoption, distribution, and what it takes to make technology work where infrastructure is uneven.
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