Hiring roundup: Former LA mayor joins Coinbase

A former mayor becomes latest Coinbase policy adviser, and the special counsel of a crypto venture firm leaves

article-image

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa | Featureflash Photo Agency/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, has been hired as a policy adviser for Coinbase.

Villaraigosa, who served as the mayor of LA between 2005 and 2013, will join the cryptocurrency exchange’s global advisory council.

Faryar Shirzad, the chief policy officer at Coinbase, wrote in a post on X that Villaraigosa will advise the leadership team at Coinbase to advance “economic freedom around the world.” 

“When 18% of America is underbanked, including 25% of Black & Hispanic households, it means the traditional financial system doesn’t work for everyone. It’s time to update the system,” Shirzad wrote.

According to the LA Times, Villaraigosa will not lobby on behalf of the global exchange but will only advise the company on developing a fair and robust regulatory framework so that it can provide services for US-based customers, noting that crypto participants “need regulatory protection.”

Paradigm special counsel leaves 

Rodrigo Seira, the special counsel of the crypto-focused venture capital firm Paradigm, has resigned and returned to Cooley LLP, a law firm where he previously worked.

Seira served at Paradigm for two and a half years and helped spearhead the company’s policy lab. He was also a founding member of blockchain and crypto-focused law firm DLX Law.

Former Citibank executive joins BitGo

Brett Reeves, a former Citibank executive who has been in the banking industry for over two decades, will join BitGo, a scalable wallet solution, to expand EMEA Sales.

Reeves most recently held the position of head of business development at Bequant, a digital asset prime broker. He previously held roles at Citibank, Nomura and Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore.


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.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Salt Lake City, UT

MON - TUES, OCT. 7 - 8, 2024

Blockworks and Bankless in collaboration with buidlbox are excited to announce the second installment of the Permissionless Hackathon – taking place October 7-8 in Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ve partnered with buidlbox to bring together the brightest minds in crypto for […]

Salt Lake City, UT

WED - FRI, OCTOBER 9 - 11, 2024

Permissionless is a conference for founders, application developers, and users. Come meet the next generation of people building and using crypto.

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 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.

recent research

4.png

Research

This months PPGC covered four main areas. Firstly, debriefing the progress and status of the mainnet implementation of the Ahmedabad hard fork. Secondly, a retrospective on the testnet phase of the Ahemdabad Hard Fork. Thirdly, an update on PIP-36 which involves replaying failed state syncs. Lastly, PIP-47 which pushes upgrades to the Polygon Protocol Council.

article-image

Institutions to test out the settlement of “digital assets and currencies” on a network that annually carries more than 5 billion financial messages

article-image

After Bitwise’s XRP ETF filing this week, one industry watcher notes: “Politics will determine whether this happens soon or in a few years”

article-image

Plus, a look back at some of the SEC’s biggest enforcement moves under Gurbir Grewal

article-image

The forward-looking financial system is being championed by several contributors to India’s UPI digital money system

article-image

Multiple teams are pursuing integration cross-chain and off-chain

article-image

An SEC spokesperson told Blockworks the Ripple judgment clashes with Supreme Court precedent and securities laws