The Driving Force Behind the Bull Market

Charlie McGarraugh, chief strategy officer, Blockchain.com, is responsible for firm-wide strategy, commercial development and Blockchain.com’s markets businesses

article-image

Charlie McGarraugh, chief strategy officer, Blockchain.com at Blockworks Bretton Woods conference; Photo by Mike Lawrence

share

In this video, Blockworks’ “Forward Guidance” podcast host Jack Farley sat down with Charlie McGarraugh, chief strategy officer of Blockchain.com, at Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit in London to talk about what is driving the crypto bull market, including the vibrant digital asset community and innovation in the space.

McGarraugh is responsible for firm-wide strategy, commercial development and Blockchain.com’s markets businesses.

Following a relocation to London in 2009, Goldman named McGarraugh to its exclusive partnership in 2012 as a result of his leadership of the build-out of its highly successful post-financial-crisis European mortgages business. In 2014 he assumed a senior role in Goldman’s commodity department as Global Head of Metals trading, overseeing all base and precious metals activities globally.

In 2016 McGarraugh decided that a fuller embrace of disruptive technologies would be a requirement to be best positioned for transitions in markets over the coming decades, and craving deep hands-on experience in tech entrepreneurship, machine learning, and electronic trading, he left Goldman to join Stratagem Technologies, a London-based AI sports prediction company he had previously seeded, as chairman and CEO.

By 2018, he decided that a pivot to digital assets was the optimal strategy to best deploy Stratagem’s technical capabilities, and the team began serious work on crypto markets. Stratagem caught the attention of Blockchain.com and was acquired in October 2018 to bring McGarraugh and the team aboard.

Watch the full interview below.


Get the day’s top crypto news and insights delivered to your inbox every evening. Subscribe to Blockworks’ free newsletter now.


Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template.jpg

Research

The BitcoinOS team is the first to have developed and posted a ZK-compressed proof on the Bitcoin network. Other proof verification efforts have been limited to the Signet or testnet deployments. Their work has resulted in the development of BitSNARK, a software library for ZK-compressed fraud proofs on the Bitcoin network. The project aims to provide a horizontal scaling solution, offering a one-stop shop for teams interested in developing a rollup on Bitcoin. This approach shares similarities with the horizontal tech stack scaling in other ecosystems like Cosmos and Optimism, particularly in its focus on simplified verification, bridging standards, and lightweight interoperability.

/

article-image

A16z’s State of Crypto report shows that DeFi has the largest number of daily active addresses, with stablecoins following closely behind

article-image

G2 is delivering real-world performance breakthroughs at 50-100 Mgas/s, Conduit says

article-image

World Liberty Financial’s token sale debuted just as an absurd AI-fueled memecoin captured crypto’s attention

article-image

Coinbase hired History Associates in 2023 to assist in retrieving records from the SEC and FDIC

article-image

Hours after pledging to support Black men’s rights to safely invest in crypto, VP Harris’s Monday night speech mentioned blockchain zero times