Crypto Hiring: Custodian Copper Adds Slate of Leaders

Crypto custodian Copper revealed a slate of new leaders Wednesday. The company announced a new chief technology officer, chief financial officer and general counsel. 

Stefano Maestri is the company’s new CTO, while Sam Goh and Sam Brown now work as its CFO and general counsel, respectively. 

Maestri was previously in the same role at both analytics company Clarivate, and the financial services division of information services provider IHGS Markit. 

Goh joins Copper from digital identity company Onfido, where he was a senior vice president. 

Brown, who had been Copper’s acting general counsel since February, now steps into the role permanently. Brown joined the company last June as its head of product following stints at Coinbase, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Investment Bank.

Copper previously brought aboard five former Bank of America Merrill Lynch employees to work on expanding its prime infrastructure offering.

TRM Labs lays off staff

TRM Labs, a firm focused on risk management and compliance for crypto businesses, laid off 9% of its workforce this week.

The company has roughly 200 employees, according to Pitchbook data.

A company spokesperson confirmed the layoffs to Blockworks Tuesday, adding that TRM Labs “made the difficult decision to adjust our resources to best align with the macroeconomic environment and future business goals.”

About a third of the TRM Labs employees laid off were on the company’s recruiting team. Remaining roles were cut from areas where “we’ve sharpened our focus,” according to the representative.

“Our recruiting team is still well-equipped to make the strategic hires planned for this year on engineering, data science and go-to-market teams that are critical to our continued growth,” the spokesperson added.

The workforce reduction comes as staff cuts at sector firms — such as Anchorage Digital and Magic Eden — have continued in recent months after crypto layoffs spiked in January. 

Other notable hires

• Gemini appointed Pravjit Tiwana as its CEO for the Asia-Pacific region as part of the US company’s latest offshore expansion plans.  
• Blockchain solution Avail, which was recently spun out of the Polygon ecosystem, has made former Polygon Labs technical lead Prabal Banerjee a co-founder. 
• DigitalBits Managing Director Daniele Mensi is being promoted to CEO after joining the blockchain project in September 2021.
• Kevin Jin, an ex-software engineer for Compound Labs and Robinhood, became the first chief technology officer for Web3 marketing platform Kalder. 
• Brendan Humpries, who previously worked as director of business oversight, risk and controls at RBC Global Asset Management joined NFT-focused Pine Protocol as its head of business. 

Phil Robl was named chief operating officer of the newly formed community management and social media division of web3-focused PR agency Jukebox.

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