Key crypto hires, exits and moves: February 2022

February saw a big surge in crypto hires as businesses continue to use their large funding rounds from 2021 to poach talent from rivals — and to keep fueling the exodus from Wall Street.

There was a continued focus on regulation and policy, with many firms picking up compliance officers and legal experts to help them deal with policymakers and emerging crypto-specific rules.

There were also some large movements for VC firms, with Paradigm, Archetype and KRH Partners all making key hires. They weren’t all traditional; one hire was an anonymous kid who’s still in high school.

Hires

• Crypto.com has hired Guiseppe Guiliani as managing director. Guiliani was formerly head of institutional relationships and services at Kraken. Also joining the company are Mike Warriner, who is now senior vice president of engineering, and Abhi Bisarya, who comes from Google Pay to take charge of product development.
• Greg Bunn has joined Blockchain.com as head of institutional client services. He will focus on building out its institutional pipeline and develop the company’s spot and options trading business.
• Institutional DeFi protocol Maple Finance has hired Katherine Kirkpatrick as general counsel and Quinn Thompson as head of growth.
• Ben Simon has left Mechanism Capital to join Spark Capital, where he will be a venture partner.
• Babel Finance has hired George Liu as head of derivatives.
• Syscoin has poached Polygon’s head of China, Charlie Hu, just a day after his old firm saw $450 million in new funding.
• Former Alibaba managing director Sébastien Badault has joined crypto hardware wallet maker Ledger as vice president of metaverse and web3. He joins alongside Seth Hertlein, who has become vice president and global head of policy. Hertlein was previously head of policy for the Stellar Development Foundation.
• Sam Rosenblum has joined KRH Partners, which is run by former a16z partner Katie Haun.
• Blockchain-focused gaming and e-sport guild BAYZ has brought on Gui Barbosa to manage business operations. He was previously head of global gaming partnerships for LATAM at TikTok.
• Crypto wallet Argent has hired Chad West as VP of marketing. Prior to joining, he spent a short stint at Gopuff after working at Revolut for four years as its director of global marketing and comms.
• The Algorand Foundation has hired Staci Warden as CEO. She has been on its board since September 2021 and previously spent 8 years at the Milken Institute think tank.
• Crypto-focused Liberty Gaming Guild has brought on Maurizio Barbieri as chief commercial officer. He last spent four years at Twitter leading sports and gaming partnership initiatives across Southeast Asia.
• India-based crypto exchange CoinSwitch has hired R Venkatesh as senior vice president of public policy.
• VC firm Paradigm has hired attorney Justin Slaughter as policy director. Slaughter has prior experience at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Paradigm also hired an anonymous developer known as Transmissions, who attends high school in California "in his spare time."
• Coinbase has brought on Scott Bauguess as vice president of global regulatory policy and Lory Kehoe as director of NFT success. It has also siphoned off Roger Bartlett, a 16-year veteran of Goldman Sachs, as vice president of global financial operations.
• Disney has hired Mike White as senior vice president of next-generation storytelling and consumer experiences. He will purportedly help build out Disney’s take on the metaverse.
• Mark Aruliah has joined Elliptic as senior policy advisor. He comes from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), where he worked for two years.
• Binance.US has poached Tammy Weinrib from Societe Generale to be its chief compliance officer. She has previously worked for another crypto exchange, Gemini.
• Simon McLoughlin has replaced J.P. Thieriot as CEO of Uphold. McLoughlin has been at the crypto exchange for four years. Thieriot’s new title is vice president.
• Eun Young Choi is now leading the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team at the US Department of Justice. Previously, Choi served as senior counsel to deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco, who has served as a public-facing official for the DOJ's crypto efforts.
• David Puell, creator of the Puell Multiple, a valuation tool focused on bitcoin miner revenue, has joined Ark Invest to do crypto and on-chain research.
• Circle has hired Nikhil Chandhok as chief product officer. He spent the last four years at Meta, working on AR Glasses. It has also picked up lawyer Jeremy Gray, a former partner at Jones Day, as senior counsel.
• Former ICE chief strategy officer David Goone has become tZERO’s CEO while ICE has become a "significant minority shareholder” in the company. tZERO’s former interim CEO, Alan Konevsky, has become executive vice president.
• FTX has named beauty entrepreneur Lauren Remington Platt as its head of global luxury partnerships.
• Katherine Wu, former senior deal lead at Coinbase, has joined Archetype, a VC firm focused on early-stage crypto investments.
• Crypto market-making firm Wintermute has brought on Morgan Dann as General Counsel, Lilian Tan as Head of Compliance and Nalaka Gamage as head of finance. Plus it has hired Katryna Hanush from State Street and David Michley from Bridgewater Associates.

Advisory and board positions

• Leslie Kilgore, Netflix’s ex-chief marketing officer, and Amrita Ahuja, Block’s chief financial officer, have joined Discord’s board. This comes ahead of a rumored IPO.
• Jack Dorsey is joining the board of directors of Bluesky, the decentralized social media project set up by Twitter while he was CEO.
• Crypto wallet Zumo has brought on two advisors. These are James Chadwick, former CEO in Singapore for GroupM, and brand advisor Jeff Carvalho, who created consumer data-focused crypto project Burrata. 
• Protego Trust Bank has added Brian Brooks and Michael Carpenter to its board. Brooks is CEO of BitFury and also sits on Voyager Digital’s board. Carpenter is the former CEO of bank holding company Ally Financial.
• Fernando Luis Vazquez Cao has joined the Cardano Foundation’s board of directors. He’s the CEO of SBI Digital Asset Holdings.

Exits

• Xen Baynham-Herd has left Blockchain.com after five years, where he was in charge of asset management.
• Christine Moy, who has worked at JP Morgan for 17 years, most recently as head of its Liink network and blockchain, has left the investment bank. 
• Kseniia Baziian has stepped down as CMO of decentralized exchange Polkadex.
• IBM’s blockchain lead Anthony Day has left after 2.5 years at the company.