Latest in Crypto Hiring: 21Shares Nabs State Street Exec

Ex-SPDR ETF business pro to lead ETP issuer’s presence in the Nordic region, Netherlands

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key takeaways

  • NFT-based protocol hires ex-Google, Facebook and Instagram employee
  • Association for Digital Asset Markets appoints new leader for its National Security Working Group

ETP issuer 21Shares hired Carl Hagerup to lead the company’s presence in the Nordics and Netherlands region.  

Hagerup joins 21Shares from State Street Global Advisors, where he began working for the asset manager’s SPDR ETF business in July 2018. He was responsible for institutional and wholesale clients across the Nordic region, including asset managers, pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and family offices.

The executive was previously head of Nordics at Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and also served in sales roles within the region for London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and Bloomberg.  

The Association for Digital Asset Markets (ADAM) appointed Mike Castiglione as chair of its new National Security Working Group.

ADAM created the unit to be a bridge between the public and private sectors by acting as a resource for the executive and legislative branches to discuss blockchain national security issues with industry experts.

Castiglione is director of regulatory affairs for digital assets for Eventus, a provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance and market risk solutions, and is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. 

NFT-based protocol Unlock hired Patrick Workman as its vice president for business development and partnerships. 

Workman will look to expand collaborations with media channels, content creators and crypto natives to lead the transformation of online business models for creators. 

He was previously a part of Google’s partnerships team and has also worked at Facebook, Instagram, Experian and Pinterest. 

Trey Zeluff is now the director of strategy and innovation for LevelField Financial, a company that offers digital assets and traditional banking services on one platform.

He joins from Fertitta Entertainment, where he drove digital asset strategy and helped broker relationships with the Houston Rockets, Golden Nugget and luxury brands.

Zeluff is tasked with building partnerships in the crypto community and will seek opportunities with “next generation customers” for commercial enterprises in the digital asset space.

Hansong Zhang, a former chief scientist at Pokemon GO creator Niantic, has joined blockchain technology provider AnChain.AI as an investor, while Rex Ng, president and co-founder of mobile game publisher 6waves, is now an advisor for the firm.

Zhang and Ng seeks to help AnChain.AI deliver web3 innovation to the masses, including its upcoming launch of the Tenzing Web3 NFT platform. The company reported Web3 enablement revenue growth of roughly 400% in the first quarter.

BIGG Digital Assets subsidiary Netcoins, which develops brokerage and exchange software for purchasing crypto, named Fraser Matthews as its president, effective June 7.

Matthews comes to Netcoins from Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF), where he was its digital strategy lead. In that role, he led the company’s digital ventures unit, which set out strategic initiatives such as bank as a service, open banking and challenger banking. 

Canadian Swiss company Spirit Blockchain Capital revealed the recent hires of Gavin Nathan as head of fundraising and Bernd Berg as a portfolio manager.  

Berg has held similar roles at banks Credit Suisse, Société Générale, Bank J. SafraSarasin and Woodman Asset Management. At Spirit, he will manage investments of the company’s treasury in equities and cryptoassets and will lead the business’s research and advisory arm. 

Nathan started his career working in the global security and intelligence segment for the UK government. He was appointed last August to lead Canam Private Equity’s global business development and fundraising efforts

In case you missed it, fund group Global X poached an executive from Switzerland-based ETP issuer 21Shares to be its head of digital assets product.  

Before working at 21Shares, Sze held senior-level roles on product teams at New York Life Investment Management for 12 years, covering traditional and alternative investment assets.

CoinShares company XBT Provider has named Jean-Charles Dudek as a managing director upon the resignation of Dennis Engström.

Dudek has 16 years of experience covering derivatives, fund structuring and alternative portfolio management. He co-founded the first quantitative crypto-focused asset manager regulated in France to hold an AIFM license.

Sweden-based XBT Provider is issuer of the Bitcoin Tracker One, which became the first bitcoin-referenced security available on a regulated exchange when it listed on Nasdaq Stockholm in 2015.


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