<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Crypto companies hired several high-level executives in March, more than <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/217805/key-crypto-hires-exits-and-moves-february-2023">the previous month</a>, as the market rebounded. Big names, including Coinbase, Immutable and Anchorage Digital Bank, each added leadership roles to their teams.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Some crypto firms turned their attention to non-U.S. markets for growth, largely due to the increasing regulatory scrutiny and uncertainty in the U.S. Coinbase hired a country director in Canada. Avalanche developer Ava Labs hired heads of business in South Korea and Japan. </span></p> <h2><b>Hires</b></h2> <ol> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Layer 1 blockchain developer </span><b>Algorand</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hired </span><b>Matthew Commons</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as its first chief financial officer.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Coinbase</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hired </span><b>Lucas Matheson</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as country director in Canada. He joined the crypto exchange after spending over five years at Shopify.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Crypto infrastructure provider </span><b>Zero Hash</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hired </span><b>Cyril Mathew</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as its new president and chief operating officer. Mathew previously led business development teams at Stripe and Coinbase.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Zero Hash</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> also hired </span><b>Araba Eshun</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as U.K. head of compliance and MLRO (money laundering reporting officer) and deputy head of international compliance. Eshun joined the company from Gemini, where she was its U.K. head of compliance. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Pixelcraft Studios</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the web3 gaming studio behind the popular NFT gaming protocol </span><b>Aavegotchi</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, hired </span><b>Jason Slama</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as its new Game Director. Slama has had stints at Ubisoft and CD Projekt Red.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Ava Labs</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the main developer behind blockchain project </span><b>Avalanche</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, hired </span><b>Justin Kim</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a former investment banker at the Korea Development Bank, and startup veteran </span><b>Roi Hirata</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as the heads of its business in South Korea and Japan, respectively. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brazilian crypto-friendly bank </span><b>Nubank</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> appointed </span><b>David Marcus</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to its board of directors. Marcus is the CEO and co-founder of Lightspark, a startup focused on building infrastructure for the Lightning Network. He previously led all payments and crypto efforts at Meta (formerly Facebook).<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Web3 investment firm </span><b>CoinFund </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">hired </span><b>Julie Mossler</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as its head of marketing and communications. Mossler most recently served as chief marketing officer (CMO) at Metaplex, a Solana-based NFT infrastructure protocol.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>CoinFund</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> also hired </span><b>Jenna Pilgrim</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as head of portfolio growth.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Decentralized cybersecurity protocol <strong>Naoris</strong> hired <strong>David Holtzman</strong> as chief strategy officer. Holtzman is the former IBM chief scientist and designer of the global DNS System used by ICANN. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Crypto investment firm </span><b>Decasonic</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hired </span><b>Danny Pantuso </b>and<b> Lauren Tierney</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as venture investors in its Chicago office. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Brian Brooks</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, former acting Comptroller of the Currency and former chief legal officer at Coinbase, joined the board of </span><b>the HBAR Foundation</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the organization helping drive the adoption of the Hedera network. Brooks also had brief stints as CEO at both Binance US and Bitfury.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Square Enix</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the web3-friendly Tokyo-based video game giant behind popular franchises such as Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, said </span><b>Takashi Kiryu</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> would replace </span><b>Yosuke Matsuda </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as the company's president and representative director, pending shareholder approval. Matsuda will retire from the company. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span><b>Hashed</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> co-founder </span><b>Alex Shin </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">and veteran hedge fund investor </span><b>Sandeep Ramesh </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">are set <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Alex+Shin+site%3Atheblock.co&amp;oq=Alex+Shin+site%3Atheblock.co&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.4018j0j7&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8">to join</a> Mysten Labs CEO Evan Cheng's new venture fund as general partners.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Web3 Foundation</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, whose flagship project is the Polkadot blockchain protocol, hired </span><b>Thomas Fecker Boxler</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as CFO and member of the executive management team. Boxler joined from the Swiss VC fund Serpentine Ventures AG, where he was COO.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Web3 gaming company </span><b>Immutable</b><a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/218048/immutable-makes-c-suite-hires-from-meta-ava-labs"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hired </span></a><b>David Bicknell </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as CFO and </span><b>Devon Ferreira </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as CMO. The Australia-based company also promoted its senior vice president <strong>Jason Suen</strong> to chief commercial officer. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Leslie Lamb</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, formerly CMO at Coinflex, joined </span><b>OPNX </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as its CEO. OPNX is co-founded by Lamb's husband, Mark Lamb, along with disgraced Three Arrows Capital founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Elad Gil</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (former VP at Twitter), </span><b>Akash Garg </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">(former CTO of Moonpay), and </span><b>Rebecca Rettig </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">(chief policy officer at Polygon) joined </span><b>Electric Capital </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as advisors to support crypto founders.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Casey Lewis</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a former senior editor at New York Magazine, joined crypto investment firm </span><b>Seven Seven Six</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as its head of content and communications.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Cameron Dickie</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, former head of EMEA sales at B2C2, joined </span><b>Nomura's Laser Digital </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as head of distribution in Dubai.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>The Stellar Development Foundation</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hired </span><b>Asiff Hirji</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, president of MoonPay, to its board of directors. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Binance Australia</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> CEO </span><b>Leigh Travers</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> stepped down from his role. </span><b>Ben Rose</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, general manager of Binance New Zealand, replaced Travers. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Crypto infrastructure firm </span><b>PolySign </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">hired </span><b>Charles "Chuck" Ocheret</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as its new CTO. Ocheret has presented on Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) and Cryptocurrencies in Financial Services to the United States House Committee on Agriculture and has served on the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Technical Advisory Committee (CFTC TAC). He has also served on the CFTC TAC Subcommittee on DLT and Market Infrastructure.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Matthias Bauer-Langgartner</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, formerly managing director of U.K. and Ireland at crypto broker </span><b>Bitpanda</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, joined </span><b>the European Central Bank </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as senior supervisor focusing on crypto assets and DLT.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Rahul Kothari</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, formerly of Reddit's crypto team, joined </span><b>Aztec Network</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a startup focused on privacy for transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, as a software engineer.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Samantha Bohbot</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, former vice president and head of growth at Digital Currency Group, joined crypto investment firm </span><b>Rockaway X </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as chief growth officer and investor.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Roshun Patel</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, former vice president at Genesis, <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/222198/former-genesis-exec-roshun-patel-joins-hack-vc-as-partner">joined </a></span><b>Hack VC</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as a partner. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Alchemy Pay</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> added </span><b>Andy Ng </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">to its management and advisory board. Ng previously held the position of senior vice president at Lazada and served as chief product officer for innovative products at Grab.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Alchemy Pay</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> also hired former White House senior advisor </span><b>David Plouffe</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as its global strategic advisor.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Komainu</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the crypto custody joint venture of Nomura, Ledger and CoinShares, hired added three members to its leadership team. </span><b>Pippa Wiskin</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> joined the firm as head of marketing, </span><b>Evelien van den Arend </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as head of compliance and regulation and </span><b>Kalifa Figaro</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as head of finance.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Blockchain analytics firm </span><b>TRM Labs</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> appointed </span><b>Chris Brummer </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">as a senior advisor to the company's leadership team. Brummer is the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Financial Technology and Faculty Director of the Institute of International Economic Law, where he has been teaching since 2009. He is the founder of DC Fintech Week, a global public policy conference on finance and technology. He is also an advisor to the Digital Dollar Project and the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, and a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>TRM Labs</strong> named its head of legal and government affairs <strong>Ari Redbord</strong> as Vice Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC's) Technology Advisory Committee. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>TON Foundation</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a non-profit association of developers that exists to advance The Open Network (TON), hired </span><b>Anthony Tsivarev</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as director of developer relations. Tsivarev previously served as a senior partner at First Stage Labs, a TON ecosystem venture builder.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Anchorage Digital Bank</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> appointed </span><b>Julie L. Williams</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, former First Senior Deputy Comptroller and Chief Counsel and twice Acting Comptroller of the Currency at the OCC, as a new member of its board of directors.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Shaun Heng</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, former head of Spartan Labs, joined </span><b>Hustle Fund</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as a venture partner.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>The DeFi Education Fund (DEF)</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hired </span><b>Michael Mosier</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of Espresso Systems and Arktouros for its steering committee. He's expected to contribute to DEF's "mission of advancing informed appreciation for democratization, resilience, and accessibility of the financial system." <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Meta</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> re-hired a veteran manager </span><b>Nick Grudin </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">to oversee its relationships with media companies and other creators, seven months after Grudin quit to join </span><b>Dapper Labs</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, an NFT startup.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /> <br /> </span> <h2><b>Exits<br /> </b></h2> </li> <li><b>Yoann Caujolle</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, managing director of funds investments at </span><b>Bpifrance</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, left the French sovereign fund. Caujolle founded Rockby, an independent European secondary investment firm providing liquidity solutions for tech portfolios.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Teresa Cascino</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a policy analyst at the </span><b>Bank of England</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, left to join Citi as its Digital Asset Risk Management Regulatory Lead within their Enterprise Risk Management Department.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Crypto venture fund </span><b>A&amp;T Capital</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">'s founding partner </span><b>Yu Jun</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> reportedly resigned after sexual harassment allegations against him emerged online. A&amp;T is said to have started an investigation into Yu's behavior in the workplace. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Tal Broda</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, vice president of engineering at crypto investment firm </span><b>Paradigm</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, reportedly left the company. Before joining Paradigm, Broda was head of platform at Citadel Securities, managing large engineering teams. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>XanPool</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a Hong Kong-based crypto-to-fiat gateway infrastructure provider, reportedly </span><b>laid off</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> around 40 people while closing its offices in Singapore and Malaysia.</span> <h2><b>Internal moves</b></h2> </li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Decentralized music platform </span><b>Audius</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> named </span><b>Shamal Ranasinghe</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as chief business officer. Ranasinghe was an advisor to the company for several years and previously worked as an executive at Sirius XM/Pandora. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Crypto investment firm </span><b>Multicoin Capital</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> promoted two members of its investment team — </span><b>Spencer Applebaum </b>and<b> Shayon Sengupta</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> — to investment partners.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Japanese crypto exchange </span><b>BitFlyer</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">'s board reportedly reappointed co-founder </span><b>Yuzo Kano</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as CEO. Kano, who owns 40% of BitFlyer, stepped aside from the top role in 2019 after a regulatory crackdown.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>Justin Schmidt</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the former head of digital asset markets at Goldman Sachs, joined the decentralized investment platform </span><b>Ondo Finance</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Schmidt has been an investor and adviser to Ondo since the beginning of the platform. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> appointed </span><b>Therese Chambers</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the watchdog's director of consumer investments, and </span><b>Steve Smart</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the National Crime Agency's director of intelligence, as joint Executive Directors of Enforcement and Market Oversight.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">DCG-owned crypto exchange </span><b>Luno </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">promoted its top two executives. Luno CEO </span><b>Marcus Swanepoel</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> took on a new role as executive chairman, and COO </span><b>James Lanigan</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> was promoted to CEO.<br /> <br /> </span></li> </ol> <h2><b>Open roles</b></h2> <ul> <li><b>The European Banking Authority</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is hiring crypto-skilled staff as it seeks to prepare for its duties under the European Union's forthcoming Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is hiring "student trainees" for its business and legal programs. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Banking giant </span><b>Goldman Sachs</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is said to be open to hiring additional employees in its digital asset group, which currently has about 70 people.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Nomura's crypto unit </span><b>Laser Digital</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is hiring a strategy lead to help develop the firm's strategic roadmap and articulate it into executable business plans. <br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><b>S&amp;P Global </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">is seeking a DeFi director to "enable the successful build-out and execution of a DeFi team strategy."<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Crypto trading and lending firm </span><b>Genesis</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is hiring a Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) Lead to develop and refine the firm's policies, standards and procedures alongside the security risk management program.<br /> <br /> </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Gaming giant </span><b>Pokemon</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is hiring a web3 corporate development principal with deep knowledge and understanding of blockchain technologies, NFTs and the metaverse.</span></li> </ul><br /><span class="copyright"><p>© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.</p> </span>