52 key crypto hires, exits and moves: August 2022

For the crypto industry, August was a month of big exits, with big names like Michael Saylor of Microstrategy, Michael Moro of Genesis Trading and Sam Trabucco of Alameda Research all stepping down from their posts. 

At the same time, there were a lot of new hires too, as many businesses kept expanding despite the ongoing bear market. We are also seeing new titles cropping up, including general DAO manager, chief metaverse officer and an NFT specialist. 

Another highlight was that crypto industry veteran Adam White returned to the fray after leaving Bakkt earlier this year. He has joined investment giant Blackstone as a senior advisor. 

Hires 

• Binance has named Karl Long as director of its Ireland outpost. Long joins from Wisdom Tree, where he was director for digital assets and commodity operations. In addition, he is a former managing director at State Street, where he oversaw the financial services company’s operation in Ireland.  
• Crypto custodian BitGo has appointed Victor Tsou as vice president of engineering. Before BitGo, Tsou was the senior director of engineering at Affirm, a buy now pay later platform. 
• Crypto mining company Mawson Infrastructure Group has appointed Ariel Sivikofsy as interim CFO following the resignation of Hetal Majithia. Sivikofsy was CFO for Distributed Storage Solutions, an Australia-based data storage provider. 
• Michael Healy, co-founder of tokenization-DAO platform Unit Network, has joined Unizen as its chief strategy officer. Healy has been working in the crypto space since 2010 and is known for building Wikileaks’ application on Android. 
• Blockchain analytics firm Flipside Crypto has hired Daphne Kwon as its DAO general manager, tasked with growing the firm’s DAO strategy. Her previous position was chief strategy officer at Meredith Corporation. 
• Polygon has appointed Marc Boiron as its chief legal officer. He previously served a similar position at derivatives protocol dYdX and has been a blockchain and securities attorney at various law firms. 
• Asset management firm Wave Financial has hired Kelly Catherine Chapman as the head of legal and chief compliance officer. She was previously product counsel for securities-related products and chief compliance officer of loans platform Figure. 
• Crypto Finance AG, a Swiss-based fintech firm, has named Kasper Luyckx as head of product. Luyckx previously spent more than five years at UBS, most recently as the bank’s executive director and head of product for digital assets. 
• Crypto venture capital firm Hashed has appointed Kim Yong-beom, former South Korean vice minister of economy and finance, to head the company’s new research institute. Kim served as vice minister from August 2019 to March 2021, during which time he promoted the maintenance and taxation of cryptocurrency exchanges. He also served as vice chair of South Korea's Financial Services Commission, where he played a role in a policy issued in 2017 that banned anonymous trading on domestic crypto exchanges. 
• Creative Artists Agency, a Los Angeles-based talent and sports agency, has appointed Joanna Popper as its chief metaverse officer. Her recent role was as global head of virtual reality for go-to-market and content partnerships for HP. 
• Lizzie Guynn has joined TTV Capital as a partner to focus on investments for early-stage fintech opportunities. Guynn previously served as Citi’s senior vice president for venture investing. 
• Point72, the hedge fund founded by billionaire Steve Cohen, has appointed Nathan Dewhurst as its crypto lead in Asia. Dewhurst joined the company in New York in 2014 and transferred to Singapore two years later. 
• Cowen Digital, the digital asset division of investment bank Cowen, is adding two new executives as part of its crypto division expansion. Jackie Rose is joining from Blockchain.com as a director of institutional sales, while Chase Campbell left Coinbase to become Cowen Digital’s vice president of digital asset sales. 
• Crypto exchange-traded product issuer 21Shares is expanding its operation in Europe and the Middle East. Marina Baudéan has been appointed as the firm’s head in France, Belgium and Luxembourg after working 15 years at Barclays Investment Bank. Oliver Schäfer, former JP Morgan Asset Management’s executive director for key account management, will head operations in Germany. 21shares also appointed Sherif El-Haddad to lead its market operation in the Middle East after previously working as a partner for various capital management companies in the region. 
• Crypto-focused prime brokerage Floating Point Group has appointed Peter Eliades as the firm’s new head of distribution. Before this role, Eliades spent more than 13 years as managing director at both Wells Fargo and JP Morgan. 
• Investment giant T. Rowe Price has named Blue Macellari as its head of digital assets strategy. The firm poached Macellari from Dunamis Trading, a crypto hedge fund, where she helped launch a “market neutral” crypto trading strategy. 
• Arbitrum has hired Andrew Saunders as its first chief marketing officer. Before Arbitrum, he was part of Amazon’s global brand marketing team. He also led brand strategy for Tastemade, served as VP of content innovation at NBCUniversal and co-founded Creative Artists Agency’s brand partnership division. 
• Crypto trading app OKX has added two new directors. Frederica Tompkins has joined as director of brand marketing, while Kim Murphy has been named as director of events. Tompkins previously worked for luxury brands Chanel and Ralph Lauren, while Murphy produced fundraising events in the Bay Area. 
• Stablecoin issuer Tether has hired Giw Zanganeh to oversee Lugano Plan ₿, the firm’s joint initiative with Lugano in Switzerland, aimed at making bitcoin as the foundation of the city’s financial infrastructure. He was among the founding members of the Swiss Association of Crypto Investors and has been serving as its treasurer since 2018. 
• Art auction house Sotheby’s has hired Brian Beccafico, who goes by Arthemort online, as the firm’s NFT specialist. Beccafico, who comes from a family of art collectors, is an NFT art collector himself. He has purchased works from Beeple, Pak and Fewocious. 
• PROOF, a media startup founded by venture capitalist Kevin Rose, has appointed @punk9059, an anonymous Twitter user who provides NFT statistics, as the firm’s director of research. 

Exits 

• Michael Saylor has stepped down as CEO of MicroStrategy. He is assuming a new role as the company’s executive chairman. 
• Genesis Trading’s CEO Michael Moro is stepping down. He will continue to advise the company through the transition. Genesis Trading’s COO Derar Islim has been appointed interim CEO. Former SAC Capital and Point72 asset management president Tom Conheeny will consult for the firm as a senior advisor to support Islim. 
• Alameda Research co-CEO Sam Trabucco has resigned. He will stay connected to the company as an advisor. Carolin Ellison will continue as sole CEO. 
• Citi’s global head of foreign exchange Itay Tuchman has left the bank after more than two decades. He is reportedly set for an unspecified role in digital assets. Stuart Staley will become the sole head of forex trading after serving as co-head of the department with Tuchman since earlier this year. 
• Stefan Chu, the head of the over-the-counter desk at Hong Kong-based TPS Capital, has left the firm. He resigned from the company several weeks after TPS distanced itself from bankrupt crypto fund Three Arrows Capital. 
• Hetal Majithia, the chief finance officer for crypto mining company Mawson Infrastructure Group, has resigned after under a year with the firm. She left the company to “pursue other opportunities,” the company wrote in an SEC filing. Mawson has appointed Ariel Sivikofsy as interim CFO. 

Promotions 

• Binance has named co-founder and chief marketing officer Yi He its new head of Binance Labs, the company’s venture capital and incubation arm. In addition to her new role, Yi will continue leading key business units at Binance, including customer support, institutional business, marketing, Binance P2P and Binance Earn. 
• BitGo promoted Chen Fang as the company’s chief operating officer from his previous role as the company’s chief product officer. Fang is a founder of Lumina, an institutional-grade portfolio management suite for digital assets, which was acquired by BitGo in 2020. 
• SCB 10X, the investment arm of Bangkok-based SCBX that focuses on tech start-ups, has appointed Mukaya “Tai” Panich as its new CEO. Tai, who succeeded Arak Sutivong, will also keep her position as chief venture and investment officer. The company also promoted partner and head of strategic planning Pailin “Pie” Vichakul to COO. 

Advisory and board positions 

• Former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Jay Clayton has become an advisor at crypto security firm Fireblocks. This is his second advisory role since resigning from the SEC in December. He previously signed on to advise digital hedge fund One River. 
• Talos, a crypto trading infrastructure firm, has named Neal Pawar as a strategic advisor. He is currently chief operating officer of Qontigo, a Germany-based investment intelligence company. 
• Emilie Choi, president and chief operating officer of Coinbase, has joined identity firm Okta’s board of directors. She joined Coinbase in 2018 after more than eight years at LinkedIn. 
• Adam White, former bitcoin custody firm Bakkt COO, has joined investment giant Blackstone as a senior advisor focused on crypto. White served as the president and COO of Bakkt from 2018 to the end of 2021. Before Bakkt, he was the vice president and general manager of Coinbase. 
• London-based investment firm Maxwell Partners has appointed Mikkel Morch and Angus John MacCormick as strategic advisors as part of the algorithmic trading firm's expansion into crypto markets. 
• NFT project Pudgy Penguins has announced its advisory board: Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik, Roofstock head of web3 Sanjay Raghavan, SAKS Fifth Ave COO RJ Cilley, Meta venture capital partnerships team lead Jordan Sterling, Save The Children CPO Chet Kuchinad, Limited Ventures general partner Bee Nguyen, Hasbro head of licensing Jess Richardson, SFX Entertainment and Fashion Nova advisor Paolo Moreno and a crypto trader known as Pentoshi.