Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_62347c36f4570" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>A former Federal Reserve Bank of New York employee has joined a lending protocol</li>
 <li>Crypto-focused asset manager Arca went on a hiring spree</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The gaming and NFT arm of Ethereum scaling platform Polygon has announced a range of hires from some of the largest Web2 companies.&nbsp;



Polygon Studios hired Michael Blank and Young Ko as its chief operating officer and chief financial officer, respectively. Blank joins after working nearly two decades at game developer and publisher Electronic Arts, while Ko spent the past 9 years as the vice president of finance at Penske Media, which includes brands Rolling Stone and Billboard.



Urvit Goel, who most recently helped Amazon launch its cloud gaming business, joins Polygon Studios as vice president of gaming business development. Charnjit Bansi, who was director of product management at Mythical Games, will be vice president of game design.



Ben Watley is Polygon Studio’s new senior director of strategy for gaming, joining from Electronic Arts. He will work alongside Will Matteson, an ex-NASA software engineer and Riot Games strategist, who joins Polygon Studios as corporate strategy manager.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The new hires join Polygon Studio’s recently appointed CEO, Ryan Wyatt, who previously headed YouTube’s gaming vertical.



Crypto exchange Bitstamp USA has hired Rika Khurdayan as its chief legal officer, Silvia Lacayo as head of marketing and Michael Levi as head of product and strategy.



Khurdayan joins from New York-based blockchain law practice KSTechLaw, which she founded. Lacayo most recently worked as head of marketing for software company Viable and also held top marketing roles at ZipRecruiter, Chainalysis and Unilever.



Levi was a managing director for nearly a decade at Level One Consulting Group, a firm focused on marketing, sales and business development strategy. He was also recently chief marketing officer for blockchain company Kava Labs, according to his LinkedIn page.&nbsp;



Crypto-focused asset manager Arca named Deborah Djeu its chief compliance officer and deputy general counsel to oversee the firm’s registered and private funds. She joins from crypto exchange Okcoin, where she was head of regulatory and chief compliance officer.



Scott Helfman, who was most recently director of public affairs at Citi, is Arca’s new head of communications. Before his decade-long tenure at Citi, he served in several communications roles at Deutsche Bank.&nbsp;



Annelise Osborne, who is now head of institutional for Arca’s innovation arm, Arca Labs, rounds out the company’s new additions. She had worked in the digital asset space as the chief operating officer of Propellr and spent 12 years at Moody&#8217;s Investor Service running commercial real estate teams within the structured finance group. 



CoinDesk named Alan Campbell as president of data and indices. The company’s flagship product, the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX), has been in operation since 2014.



Campbell was previously head of product management at Bloomberg Indices and also formerly managed Bloomberg Terminal functions and special projects for the company’s CEO.



Brandon Neal, who worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for nearly a decade, has joined Euler Finance. He now serves as the lending protocol’s chief operating officer.



Neal was most recently a Treasury auction directorate at the bank and previously handled governance and strategic planning.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



In addition to the new hires this week, blockchain infrastructure company announced that it is looking to hire more than 600 new employees following its latest <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/consensys-plans-to-redesign-metamask-and-hire-600-new-employees/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$450 million fundraising round</a>.



Job postings with titles containing terms such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain and cryptocurrency grew 395% in the US from 2020 to 2021, according to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/linkedin-news_theworkshift-economy-labormarket-activity-6887062336839016450-67iT/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a LinkedIn analysis</a>. This outpaced the broader tech industry, which saw a 98% increase in listings during the same time period.



A Blockworks search on Thursday of US LinkedIn-listed jobs featuring the keyword “crypto” yielded 16,862 results.



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Did you know that Blockworks is hiring too? Check out our available roles on our <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/careers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Careers page</a>!



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The Latest in Crypto Hiring: Polygon Studios Adds Range of Talent

Casey Wagner

<div id="highlights-block_61b9edf800040" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Galaxy Digital announced the launch of the Galaxy Solana Funds Wednesday, with a minimum investment of $25,000</li>
 <li>The fund is passively managed and will track the new Bloomberg Galaxy Solana Index</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Galaxy Digital has launched an investment fund for Solana, the Ethereum competitor whose native token SOL is up more than 9,000% this year, the company announced Wednesday.&nbsp;



Galaxy Solana Funds, designed for institutional investors, is passively managed and will track the performance of the Bloomberg Galaxy Solana Index, which launched in November (ticker: SOL). The minimum investment will be $250,000, according to <a href="https://www.galaxyfundmanagement.com/funds/solana" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Galaxy</a>. 



“The crypto economy is on an exciting growth trajectory, and we’re meeting the opportunity by thoughtfully expanding our product suite to provide access to the institutional-grade portion of the digital asset class,” said Steve Kurz, global head of asset management at Galaxy Digital. “Solana has a compelling use case, a strong technological foundation, and is of increasing interest to crypto investors.”&nbsp;



The news comes as Solana has <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=solana" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">exploded in popularity</a> in recent months, amid rising concerns about Ethereum’s high fees and slow transaction speed. Solana, which launched in March 2020, is advertised as the fastest programmable blockchain. The network can handle 50,000 transactions per second and hosts over 400 DeFi, NFT and other Web 3.0 projects, according to the platform.&nbsp;



&#8220;We’re consistently looking for opportunities in the ever-evolving crypto markets, and it’s clear that Solana is growing quickly in the space,” said Alan Campbell, global head of product for Bloomberg&#8217;s multi-asset Index business, in a statement. “This new index is another opportunity to meet the actively engaged institutional market, and we’re excited to continue working closely with an industry leader like Galaxy as we expand our crypto capabilities and offerings.”



Despite the recent sell off that saw ETH lose 17% in the past month, the second largest cryptocurrency remains up more than 500% over the year, according to <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethereum" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data from Coin Gecko</a>. Solana’s SOL token is <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/solana" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">down about 31%</a> in the same period.



Growing investor interest in decentralized finance tokens is only going to continue to grow, experts anticipate.



“Since digital assets have consistently outperformed traditional asset classes, we predict that investors will see allocation to digital assets as a part of their risk management strategy — especially given the increasingly inflationary economic environment and the declining bond yields,” Loukas Lagoudis, executive director at Ark36. “On that note, we also expect that Ethereum will continue to gain ground against Bitcoin, at least in the medium term, as its importance for institutional investors will continue to grow.”



Galaxy’s fund launch comes weeks after Grayscale launched its Grayscale Solana Trust, which is available to accredited individual and institutional investors.



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