Crypto Hiring: Binance US taps new chief compliance officer

Elsewhere, the Telos Foundation tapped a new executive director

article-image

ymcgraphic/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Binance US, an American affiliate of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has hired a new chief compliance officer.

The move to hire Lesley O’Neill comes amid intense regulatory scrutiny in the US by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC sued Binance US in June, alleging that the company engaged in unregistered sales of crypto asset securities, and commingled customer funds. That legal action remains ongoing.

According to LinkedIn, O’Neill previously worked in legal and compliance roles at Prove, last serving as its chief compliance officer. She also held roles at EY, Milbank and Bloomberg, per her profile.

In a statement, Binance US said that O’Neill would lead the firm’s sanctions, anti-money laundering, and know-your-customer initiatives. 

“I look forward to earning and maintaining the trust of our customers and regulators by building upon the company’s strong foundation of compliance and deepening its commitment to accountability and transparency,” O’Neill said in a statement. 

Last month, Binance and now-former chief executive Changpeng Zhao agreed to a multibillion-dollar settlement with the US Department of Justice. Zhao remains in the US ahead of a sentencing hearing in February.

The SEC continues to pursue its case against Binance, Binance US and Zhao, alleging that the defendants deliberately violated US securities laws.

“We allege that Zhao and the Binance entities not only knew the rules of the road, but they also consciously chose to evade them and put their customers and investors at risk,” Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s enforcement division, said in a statement at the time. 

Read more: The US watered down crypto when it ousted Binance’s Zhao — and that’s okay

Friend.tech looking for smart contract engineer

Meanwhile, Friend.tech, the social finance app that went viral last year, is on the hunt for a smart contract engineer.

The firm, according to a job board hosted by crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, is offering as much as $200,000 in salary for “an experienced smart contract engineer to help us build the next generation of friendtech smart contracts.”

Friend.tech took the crypto world by storm last summer, scoring more than 100,000 users within a month of its launch. The app uses social tokens and a digital “share” system for interacting with influencers and other accounts. 

But the app’s interest bubble popped in the weeks and months that followed. DappRadar’s dashboard shows that volumes and transaction counts are well below the last summer’s highs. 

Read more: Friend.tech: Flash in the pan or inevitable future of crypto financialization?

Other notable hiring news

  • The Telos Foundation has hired John Lilic to be its executive director. Lilic is a long-time crypto builder, having been an early employee at ConsenSys and Metamask. “I’m looking forward to applying my extensive experience and insights from my time with the Bitcoin Center NYC, Consensys, Polygon and other successful ventures,” Lilic said in a statement.

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 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.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (8).png

Research

Meta-aggregators like Titan and Kamino Swap improve price execution for users, making the Solana swapping landscape more competitive. Jupiter has incorporated meta-aggregation features into its latest routing engine to keep users on its front end (own the user, own the flow). At large, teams are treating swaps as a commoditized complement, offering incredibly cheap or free swaps to own the end-user and increase demand for high-margin product offerings (multi-product DeFi). On another note, the divergence in the concentration of aggregator volume between DEXs suggests increased specialization at the DEX layer by asset type.

article-image

Onboarding the world to Bitcoin takes a series of firsts

article-image

If we get an altcoin season, it’ll be focused on tokens deemed “ fundamentally valuable enough for traditional public money and capital” to get involved with

article-image

Solana dropped nearly 10% amid mass crypto liquidations triggered by rising geopolitical strife

article-image

Investors moved to safe assets like the US dollar and gold, but bonds faltered

article-image

The Amex offers up to 4% bitcoin back, but the deal is a bit ironic considering crypto’s goals

article-image

Short answer: Subnets are now cheaper to bootstrap than a Celestia rollup