Key crypto hires, exits and moves: April 2022

Crypto prices might be in the slumps but the crypto industry is chugging on regardless. April was another marathon month for hires, with a big focus on stealing regulatory talent from regulatory agencies (perhaps the idea is if you hire all the regulators, there’s no one left to sue you).

There was also a focus on key marketing hires, while in the background crypto firms continued to spend an absolute fortune on sponsoring major sports events, stadiums and pretty much anything they can get their hands on.

One particularly notable hire in this vein was Melissa Brooks who Blockchain.com has hired to lead its global sports and entertainment partnerships. Earlier in her career, she spent 9 years working for the Miami Heat basketball team, which plays its home games at what is now called the FTX Arena (see what I mean?).

With so many hires this month, we have split them up to make the roster easier to digest. 

Regulatory hires

• Crypto trading and investment firm JST Capital has hired Martin Grant as global head of regulatory affairs & integrity. He joins from the New York Federal Reserve, where he was senior vice president and chief compliance and ethics officer for 15 years.
• Varun Paul, the former head of the fintech hub at the Bank of England, has left to take up a role at Fireblocks, ending a nearly 14-year stint at the UK central bank, writes Lucy Harley-McKeown.
• In addition, Binance has poached Steven McWhirter from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to be its global director of regulatory policy, writes Lucy Harley-McKeown. He left the regulator after a more than nine-year tenure, during which he held a number of fintech-related roles. It also hired Seth Levy from the UK’s Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
• Binance has hired yet another former regulator in Stéphanie Cabossioras, writes Andrew Rummer. She joins from France's Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), where she was deputy general counsel.
• Centre, a consortium founded by Circle and Coinbase, has added Linda Jeng as chief policy and regulatory officer. It has also hired Danielle Harold, who was last head of business and payment operations at the Diem Association, as COO.
• Crypto.com has hired Duncan DeVille as EVP of compliance for America and global head of financial crimes compliance. He joins from Western Union, where he had a similar role.
• Coinbase has brought on Akshay Verma as director and head of legal operations. He joins from Meta, where he held the same position.
• TRM Labs, a blockchain analytics firm used by Uniswap Labs among others, has hired Chris Janczewski from the US Internal Revenue Service. He worked there for 15 years, most recently as a special agent in its cyber crimes unit.

Marketing hires

• Coinbase has also poached two people from Blackrock, hiring Anthony Bassili as head of pensions and Di Sanborn as head of institutional marketing. 
• Blockchain.com has brought on Marissa Brooks, who founded marketing agency 4WRD, to run global sports and entertainment partnerships. This comes at a time when major crypto companies are spending a fortune on sports partnerships (yes we’re looking at you FTX and Crypto.com).
• Eva Oberholzer has joined the Dfinity Foundation as chief growth officer. She joins from the Cardano Foundation, where she had the same role.
• Kraken has hired Mayur Gupta as its CMO. He joins from Gannett – USA Today Network, where he was chief marketing and strategy officer.
• Quant, a blockchain firm that created enterprise blockchain software Overledger, has hired Andrew Carrier as CMO. He has previously worked in marketing for Deutsche Bank.
• Galaxy Digital has hired Sebastian Benkert as CMO. He joins from ARK Investment Management, where he had the same role.

C-suite hires and VC partners

Here’s a selection of C-suite hires that haven’t been mentioned so far, along with a couple of top hires at VC firms.

• Mining company Argo Blockchain has appointed Seif El-Bakly as COO. He joins from a data-driven social fintech firm called Where is the Heart, one of several businesses he has founded.
• Rival mining firm Marathon Digital has hired Hugh Gallagher as CFO. He comes from Tradeshift, where he had the same role.
• Blockdaemon has hired Geoff Clauss as CRO. He joins from Anchorage, where he was the head of sales. The staking firm also poached Ben Einstein from Robinhood to lead business development. At Robinhoood, he was head of crypto partnerships.
• Katie Haun’s new venture firm Haun Ventures — which she set up after leaving a16z — has brought on Chris Ahn as a partner. He comes from Index Ventures, where he was also a partner.
• Doug Feagin has joined Paradigm as a partner. He joins from Coatue, where he was an investor.

General hires

We take a look at the main hires across the industry in a variety of roles.

• Coinbase has hired Bayo Akins as a principle of cloud sales. He joins from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, where he worked for nearly four years, most recently as a senior account executive. 
• Eventus — a markets surveillance firm used by crypto exchanges Coinbase and Gemini among others — has hired Nick Wallis as managing director of EMEA. He spent the last 11 years at NASDAQ, most recently as EMEA head of sales and account management.
• Binance has appointed former Microsoft corporate vice-president Rohit Wad as its chief technology officer, writes Kristin Majcher. The cryptocurrency exchange also added Mayur Kamat to serve as its head of product, joining the company after serving as the vice-president of product for travel company Agoda.
• NFT platform Immutable has hired Jason Suen as SVP of commercial. He comes from Shopify where he was head of global expansion markets and Southeast Asia.
• Bobby Dresser has joined Optimism PBC (the company behind the eponymous Layer 2 blockchain) as head of product. He spent the last two years at GitHub and the two prior years at MetaMask.
• Digital asset investment firm Copper has hired a spate of executives from Bank of America. These include Michael Roberts, who was the head of the bank’s prime brokerage platform for the EMEA region, and former directors Adam Groom and Paul Barham. They are set to build a team developing infrastructure for prime brokerage platforms.
• Trading platform Elwood has hired Brian Pomraning as its global head of business development. He was last the CRO of Pico, a provider of trading solutions.
• Crypto ETP issuer 21Shares has poached Karan Chawla as its VP of product. He comes from Uber where he was head of payments for the US, Canada and APAC regions.
• A16z has brought on Craig Naylor as head of talent for crypto. He joins from restaurant software provider CloudKitchens, where he worked for four years, most recently as global program manager of integrations.
• Payments platform Checkout.com, which supports crypto payments, has hired Mark Fernandes as head of crypto product. He joins from Novi where he was a product manager.

Hiring tidbits

Here are a few hires that may be interesting to those in the crypto industry.

• A crypto anon known as Ceteris has joined Delphi Digital as a researcher. He’s well known on Twitter as a heavy DeFi user.
• Crypto-focused investment firm Sino Global Capital has poached Eric Nemeth from BlackRock, where he was an analyst. He joins as an investment associate for the firm, which is largely focused on Asia. 
• A crypto anon known as Zaheer has joined Ledger Prime as a portfolio manager. They will focus on liquid strategies and supporting private investments.

Promotions

Here’s who got promoted to a bigger role last month.

• The Global Digital Asset and Cryptocurrency Association — a self-regulatory association focused on crypto — has named co-founder and board member Gabriella Kusz as CEO.
• Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha, who was formerly the head of its US and European funds, has now become its senior steward — a new title for the same role that was previously called global managing partner. 
• Victoria McLoughlin has been promoted to interim head of department for digital assets at the UK’s FCA. She has worked at the FCA for 11 years, the last two in the digital assets division.

Advisory and board positions

A look at the addition of key talent to help advise and support these companies.

• A crypto anon called Hasu, who works at MEV-focused collective Flashbots, has joined liquid staking company Lido as a strategic advisor.
• Former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan has joined NFT.com as a strategic advisor.
• Social networking app Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar has joined ConsenSys’ board of directors.
• Crypto compliance platform Astra Protocol has added Mick Mulvaney as a strategic advisor. He is a former member of the US House of Representatives and was the acting White House Chief of Staff. He currently works for CBS News.
• John Tsang, former financial secretary of Hong Kong, has joined StashAway as an advisor. He is releasing his own collection of NFTs.

Exits

Just two key exits this month, both from the same firm.

• James Hunsaker has left Jump Trading, while Keone Hon has left the trading firm’s crypto arm. Together they have launched Monad, which is focused on improving the way the Ethereum Virtual Machine works.