Fed Hires TD Ameritrade’s Sunayna Tuteja as Chief Innovation Officer

TD Ameritrade’s Sunayna Tuteja, the brokerage’s former chief of digital assets and distributed ledger, has been hired by the Fed as its new Chief Innovation Officer according to a Linkedin post made by Tuteja. Blockworks reached out to the Fed’s public […]

article-image

Sunayna Tuteja speaking at Blockworks’ DAS: Markets summit in 2019

share

key takeaways

  • Tuteja has been a long advocate for digital assets
  • Tuteja’s appointment at the Fed may signal acknowledgement of crypto’s potential

TD Ameritrade’s Sunayna Tuteja, the brokerage’s former chief of digital assets and distributed ledger, has been hired by the Fed as its new Chief Innovation Officer according to a Linkedin post made by Tuteja.

Blockworks reached out to the Fed’s public affairs office but did not receive a response.

Tuteja has been a long proponent of bitcoin, stating in an earlier interview with Blockworks that she has been a bitcoiner since 2011. In a 2019 profile piece in American Banker she said that TD Ameritrade was now “bullish” on blockchain after she led internal efforts to evangelize the merits of the technology.

Tuteja had a major role in getting the brokerage — once a skeptic of digital assets — to view it as another asset class. During her time at TD Ameritrade she led its investment into ErisX, a CFTC-regulated cryptocurrency exchange. 

Tuteja has said market participants are engaging with bitcoin for “pragmatic reasons” and coming into the asset class because of a confluence of macroeconomic issues. 

“The world is flush with cash that has got to go somewhere,” she told Blockworks last month. “They’re searching for assets that provide a store of value, that provide an inflation hedge, and provide diversification in asset allocation. Driven by Covid, we as consumers really are now in the era of digitization of everything, consumers and investors are saying well digitization should extend to our investments.”

Tuteja’s move from TD Ameritrade to the Fed is one of many high-profile hires by institutions in the blockchain and fintech space. 

Former governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada Mark Carney was recently hired by payments processor Stripe, while former Bridgewater Co-CEO Eileen Murray joined digital assets software provider Lukka as a strategic advisor.

Tags

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

Unlocked by Template (7).png

Research

Union’s improvements upon Tendermint consensus through CometBLS, coupled with ZK proving through Galois, allow for a broadly scalable, cost efficient, and low latency IBC implementation that is feasibly scalable across every existing blockchain, virtual machine and runtime. The implementation offers modular crosschain interoperability without the need for trusted intermediaries.  

article-image

35% of admitted teams are building AI apps, while 30% are using stablecoins

article-image

Those in the US who preregistered for the app got $150 worth of WLD

article-image

The L2 chain with opt-in privacy features was eight years in the making

article-image

Bitcoin stands on the shoulders of these Cypherpunk giants

article-image

Unto’s Will Yoo and Liam Heeger spoke to the Empire newsletter about their raise and how they plan to build Thru

article-image

Greater efficiency, William Jevons predicted, would lead to even greater consumption