55 key crypto hires, exits and moves: May 2022

While the crypto industry has been on a wild hiring spree for the last two years, the current downturn in prices finally started having an effect. 

Coinbase dampened plans to triple its headcount, which began at the start of the year when it had around 2,800 members of staff. Coinbase COO Emilie Choi said the firm would be slowing hiring to “reprioritize our hiring needs against our highest-priority business goals.”

Worse, Latin American crypto exchange Bitso laid off 80 employees, with the company saying the decision was made in the “long-term interest of our business.”

It’s not all bad, however. Fidelity Digital Assets plans to hire 110 new employees to expand its infrastructure to support more cryptocurrencies than just bitcoin, the WSJ reported.

Crypto firms continued to make big hires and poaches during May, continuing the pattern of hiring from traditional finance and government roles. 

Legal, regulatory and compliance

• Sven Neiderhider has joined Blockchain.com as head of legal and compliance. He has spent 20 years in the banking sector, most recently leading compliance for the neobank N26.
• Web3 Foundation has hired Daniel Schoenberger as general counsel and chief legal officer. He joins from Google where he was head of legal for Switzerland and Austria for the last 13 years.
• Binance has hired Joshua Eaton as deputy general counsel. He joins from the United States Attorney’s Offices, where he worked for 15 years. He was previously the deputy US attorney in the Northern District of California.
• FTX US has hired Marissa MacDonald as chief compliance officer for FTX Trust, as the company seeks to get a trust charter in New York. She was last at Fidelity, where she worked for 14 years, most recently as CCO of Fidelity Digital Assets.
• Uniswap Labs has hired Salman Banaei as head of policy. Banaei joins from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, where he was co-head of public policy.
• Josh Wilsusen, former Managing Director for Public Policy and Government Affairs at Ally Bank, as its first Chief Policy Officer.
• Binance.US has hired Krishna Juvvadi as vice president and head of legal. He joins from Uber, where he was global head of operations compliance. The exchange has also brought on Josh Wilsusen as chief policy officer. He joins from Ally Bank where he was managing director for public policy and government affairs.
• Crypto banking partner BCB Group has appointed Natasha Powell as chief compliance officer. She was last director of risk and compliance at European lending platform White Oak.
• Blockchain analytics firm TRM has hired Sujit Raman as general counsel. He is a former associate deputy attorney general at the US Department of Justice. Prior to that, he worked in the US Attorneys'​ Offices for eight years.
• The Centre Consortium has brought on Rebecca Cohen as general counsel. She joins from Worldcoin, the controversial token launched by Sam Altman that aims to scan everyone’s eyeballs.
• Roeland Van der Stappen has joined Crypto.com as vice president of policy and engagement for EMEA. 

Marketing

• Andrew Dubatowka has joined blockchain gaming company Infinite Arcade as a core contributor for product marketing. He spent the last four years at Visa, most recently as senior director of global marketing. 
• OKX has hired Rachel Conlan as global brand and marketing lead. She joins from CAA Sports, where she focused on global brand partnerships. This comes as OKX and other crypto companies continue to plow money into sports partnerships.
• Crypto investment firm Walden Bridge Capital has poached Christine Sandler from Fidelity, where she worked for three years as head of sales and marketing. She has also previously worked at Coinbase.
• Matthew Howells-Barby has joined the Metaverse-focused Decentral Games as CMO after being an advisor to the project for three months. He joins from software company HubSpot, where he worked for six years, most recently as vice president of marketing.
• Metaplex Studios has poached Julie Mossler from Paxos where she was interim CMO. She will now be a fully fledged CMO at Metaplex, which is focused on NFTs on the Solana blockchain.

General hires

• Chris Sharp has joined crypto staking company Blockdaemon as CTO. He spent the last 23 years at Apple, most recently as Apple Pay architect.
• Galaxy Digital has brought on Danielle Johnson as head of private capital markets. She joins from Credit Suisse, having previously worked at Goldman Sachs for 21 years.
• Coinbase has hired Durgesh Kaushik, the former head of Snap India — behind the SnapChat app — as senior director for market expansion.
• Crypto institutional infrastructure firm Fireblocks has hired Varun Paul as director of CBDC — an acronym for central bank digital currency — and market infrastructure. He joins from the Bank of England where he worked for nearly 14 years, most recently as head of its fintech hub.
• David Marcus, the former head of Meta's crypto and digital finance operations, has unveiled his latest endeavor: Lightspark, a company aimed at expanding the use cases of bitcoin.
• Hunter Merghart has now joined his fourth crypto firm in as many years. He’s now the COO of alternative investment firm Millenium, where he will set out the firm’s crypto strategy. His resume now includes Nic Carter’s Castle Island Ventures, Bitstamp and Coinbase.
• MicroStrategy has replaced its CFO following its large bitcoin purchases and the subsequent rise and fall of its share price. Andrew Kang will replace Phong Le, who will continue to serve as president. Kang joins from commerce company GreenSky.
• Crypto exchange Bitfinex has hired Giles Dixon as head of licensing. He joins from Grant Thornton, where he worked for seven years in both the UK and Canada.
• Ryan Silva has joined BlockTower Capital as head of trading. He was last a senior portfolio manager at Celsius.
• Scott Leader has joined crypto surveillance firm Eventus as managing director of APAC. He joins from enterprise cloud service provider Workday.
• Visa’s global head of fintech and crypto, Terry Angelos, has left the financial services company to take over as CEO of mobile trading tech company DriveWealth.
• Conrad Whelan, a founding engineer of Uber, has come out of early retirement to join crypto node infrastructure company Nillion as CTO.
• Kemal El Moujahid has joined Chainlink Labs as chief product officer. He joins from Google, where he was director of product management for nearly four years.
• KPMG UK has hired Ian Taylor as head of crypto and digital assets. He comes from Barclays where he was an interest rate modeller. He has been executive director of UK crypto lobby CryptoUK since January 2020.
• Jesse Knutson has joined Bitfinex Securities as head of operations. This is crypto exchange Bitfinex’s latest offering that’s focused on tokenized company shares. 
• Bitcoin mining company TeraWulf has hired Patrick Fleury as CFO. He has spent 22 years in the financial services industry.
• Satoshi Labs — makers of the Trezor hardware wallet — has hired Jan Andraščík as chief information security officer. He joins from ARES Cyber Defense, where he was a freelancer.
• Wander Rutgers — former president of Robinhood UK — has joined Lightyear as COO. Lightyear is a stock trading app built by former Wise engineers.
• Eric Vincent has joined Dan Tapiero’s investment management firm 10T as president. He was last president of investment management firm Sarissa Capital Management.
• NFT marketplace Sorare has hired Aalok Kapoor as head of marketplace operations. He joins from Uber, where he worked for six years, mostly focused on UberEATS and Uber Grocery.
• NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway — which is owned by crypto exchange Gemini — has brought on Eddie Ma as VP of engineering. He has previously worked at Uber and Meta (formerly Facebook).
• Chikai Ohazama has joined Niantic Labs, the maker of Pokemon Go, as its director of Web3. Ohazama co-created Google Earth and is the founder of Monolith Gallery and Superniftyfan.
• Katie Haun’s new VC firm Haun Ventures has hired Breck Stodghill as an investment associate. He is a former Coinbase product engineer. 
• Crypto.com has poached Kwon Park from Bittrex Global where he was chief strategy officer. He joins the firm as managing director. His remit is to guide the firm’s “Web3 ambitions.”

Promotions

• Argo Blockchain has promoted Justin Nolan to chief growth officer. He joined the bitcoin mining company in March 2021 and previously worked as vice president of business development.
• Crypto exchange Bitstamp has promoted JB Graftieaux to CEO, in the wake of Julian Sawyer’s departure. He was previously the company’s Europe CEO. 
• Bithumb has promoted Jae-won Lee, one of the exchange’s founding members, to CEO. He will replace Baek-Young Heo, who will move to the position of general manager.

Advisory and board positions

• NFT project Azuki has brought on Rehito Hatoyama as an advisor. Hatoyama is the former CEO of Sanrio US/EU, where he helped to build brands like Hello Kitty.
• Mable Jiang has become the new CRO of Stepn, a company that uses tokens to incentivize its users to do exercise (with similar tokenomics to play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity). She joins from investment firm Multicoin Capital.
• Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph is joining the board of directors of Cheeze Inc, an NFT platform built on the Flow blockchain. 

Exits

• Dan Held is stepping down from his role as director of growth marketing at crypto exchange Kraken to focus on a personal consulting business, according to CoinDesk. He will remain connected to Kraken, in a brand ambassador role. 
• Mike Kennedy has stepped down as CEO of Velo Labs, the company behind the Velo Protocol. He will be replaced by Mike Cowans as interim CEO while the company searches for a replacement.
• Vincent Lau has stepped down as managing director of crypto exchange Huobi Global. He has launched two companies, investment company Wise Ventures and NFT-focused Naffiti.
• Jim Prosser has stepped down as head of communications at crypto investment firm Paradigm after one year in the role. He joined the firm from Edelman. He said on Twitter that he wanted to take a break after a decade of working in demanding roles.
• Bakkt's CFO Drew LaBenne is leaving the firm in June after a little over a year with the Georgia-based crypto startup. He will be replaced by Bakkt's chief accounting officer Karen Alexander.