The Latest in Crypto Hiring: Ex-FINRA, NY Fed Bank Leaders Switch Sectors

key takeaways

Binance last week appointed two executives with previous experience at Microsoft, Facebook and Google
ConsenSys adds Nextdoor CEO as its newest board member

JST Capital, a global financial services firm specializing in digital assets, hired Martin Grant as its global head of regulatory affairs and integrity. In the role, he will engage with global regulators as they work to adopt policies for the evolving crypto markets.

Grant joins from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he was a senior vice president and chief compliance and ethics officer for more than 15 years.

JST Capital has participated in about 10 seed funding rounds over the past year, including for non-fungible token (NFT) firm Recur, Singapore-based crypto platform InvestaX and Solana-based oracle Switchboard.

Digital Prime Technologies hired Glen Garofalo as head of margin and risk solutions. The company seeks to help traditional Wall Street firms enter the digital asset space with its customizable prime services.

Garofalo was director of credit regulation for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) from 2007 to 2016. He later served as the head of prime services margin at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Crypto analytics platform Elementus expanded its leadership team with hires from Amazon, JPMorgan and Global Relay.

CEX.IO, an ecosystem of offerings connecting people and businesses to the crypto economy and DeFi, appointed Jonathan Wykes as UK managing director and Richard Evans as managing director for its prime liquidity platform.

Prior to joining CEX.IO, Wykes held leadership positions with Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse. Evans spent about five years with Barclays Investment Bank in its equities division, and roughly a decade with Citi, focusing on program trading.

ConsenSys added Sarah Friar as its newest board member as she will advise on issues relating to emerging Web3 business models and the company’s business operations.

Friar also sits on the boards of Walmart and HOPE Global and is the CEO of social networking service Nextdoor. Before serving as Nextdoor’s CEO, she was the chief financial officer of Square, which has since been renamed Block.

Gryphon Digital Mining, which aims to have a negative carbon footprint, named Brian Chase chief financial officer.

Chase spent 14 years at Garrison Investment Group as a partner, CFO and chief operating officer. Before that, he was the CFO of a newly formed distressed credit business at the Blackstone Group, a New York-based alternative investment management firm with $881 billion in assets under management.

CoinPayments has hired Malcolm Atuona, the former head of financial operations at XBTO’s StableHouse crypto finance group, as its CFO.

Founded in 2013, the crypto payments company supports more than 2,100 coins on its platform. Its transactions reached $7 billion in 2021, up more than 100% year over year.

Crypto exchange Binance also last week appointed former Microsoft corporate vice president Rohit Wad as its chief technology officer and Mayur Kamat, an ex-vice president of product at online travel agency Agoda, as its head of product.

Prior to Microsoft, Wad was an engineering director at Facebook and Google and helped develop Microsoft Teams and Skype. At Binance, Wad will be responsible for engineering scalable, compliant and fast Web3 services while ensuring the security, stability and liquidity of the exchange.

In addition to working for Agoda, Kamat led product teams at Hiya and Google, helping to develop Gmail for mobile, Android for Work, Hangouts, Google Voice and Windows DRM. He is now tasked with guiding the Binance team to build products that will bring mass adoption to crypto and lower the barrier to entry to Web3 technology.

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.