Latest in Hiring: Ex-Bank of England Exec Jumps Into Crypto

Former pro at Meta, SoftBank joins Singapore-based blockchain gaming company

article-image

Blockworks exclusive art by axel Rangel

share

key takeaways

  • Bitget adds managing director to help connect centralized and decentralized finance
  • Fidelity Digital Assets looks to up hiring, while Coinbase expects to slow additions

Crypto technology provider Fireblocks hired a former Bank of England executive as its new CBDC and market infrastructure director.

Varun Paul, who will serve on Fireblocks’ corporate strategy team, was at the Bank of England for 14 years and ultimately led its fintech hub and future of finance initiatives.

“From CBDC [central bank digital currency] developments to the tokenization of traditional financial assets, bridging digital assets and blockchain technologies to traditional institutions at scale will require strong working relationships with the central bank community,” Fireblocks Head of Corporate Strategy Adam Levine said in a statement. 

Derivatives exchange Bitget appointed Gracy Chen as a managing director. She previously held executive roles at XRSPACE, a virtual reality technology company headquartered in Taipei.  

Bitget reported its all-time high derivatives trading volume of $8.7 billion earlier this year — a 300% increase from the year before.

Chen noted in a statement that she is an “avid investor” in crypto and seeks to help Bitget connect centralized and decentralized finance, “resulting in an expansive bridge to the vast web of crypto.”

Digital Entertainment Asset (DEA), a blockchain gaming and entertainment company based in Singapore, named Tatsuya Kohrogi as its head of global business.

Known for its gaming and decentralized finance (GameFi) platform PlayMining, which allows players to mine crypto while they play games, DEA has 2.4 million players worldwide. The company was founded in 2018 and is developing play-to-earn game JobTribes and an NFT marketplace.

Kohrogi served as a partner manager at Meta (formerly Facebook), where he worked with ad agencies in Japan. Prior to Meta, he was at SoftBank, where he held investment strategy, business development, sales management and digital marketing roles during his seven years at the company.

“As we begin to expand our business across Asia, Europe and North America, we are confident each region will grow under Tatsuya’s leadership,” DEA CEO Naohito Yoshida said in a statement.

In case you missed it, Fidelity Investments’ digital asset arm said it is seeking to double its headcount by the end of the year as it pushes to expand its support for assets other than bitcoin. The expansion would include hiring about 210 workers across client services, custody operations, execution services and technology building roles, a spokesperson told Blockworks earlier this week.  

Others are slowing down hiring amid the crypto market downturn. 

Coinbase Chief People Officer L.J. Brock wrote in a company post that the exchange has decided to take more “stringent measures” to slow its headcount growth in hopes of navigating uncertain waters.

Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss said in a Tuesday memo to employees that the company expects to cut 10% of its staff due to the ongoing crypto downturn, as well as macroeconomic and geopolitical factors.


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.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

The Stripe-acquired firm has big plans for a streamlined, multi-wallet future

article-image

Both founders of the former crypto lender have now landed in new crypto industry roles

article-image

Bitcoin’s recent peak is a victory lap for curvers left and right

article-image

Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo says institutions are eager to get exposure to tokenization

article-image

Trade isn’t war and prosperity isn’t a contest