Crypto Hiring: The post-election people moves

Crypto.com nabbed Manuel Del Aguila Barbero to lead its growth efforts ahead of a year various industry participants expect to be filled with inflection points.

Del Aguila Barbero steps into the global head of growth role after spending nine years at derivatives trading firm IG Group. There, he was a global head of acquisition and media, as well as the head of client acquisition operations.  

In a statement, Del Aguila Barbero noted Crypto.com’s 2025 product roadmap that includes “new product offerings and expansion into TradFi, derivatives and banking.”

Also this week, crypto app Tap Global Group appointed Peter Wall as a strategic adviser, intending to make him a non-executive chairman upon further due-diligence checks.

Wall was formerly the CEO of bitcoin miner Argo Blockchain from 2020 to 2023, leading the company during its public listing on the Nasdaq in 2021. 

The executive is set to focus on “building high-performing teams and positioning the company as an attractive investment proposition,” Tap Global said in a Friday news release. 

And though not a hiring item per se, the Utopia Labs team is joining Coinbase’s layer-2, Base, to help accelerate its onchain payments roadmap within Coinbase Wallet, the crypto exchange revealed Wednesday. 

Utopia Labs CEO Kaito Cunningham said in an X post that Coinbase is “incredibly well equipped to accelerate the adoption of stablecoins.”

“This felt like the right fit, and the right time to join given the flywheel of USDC, Coinbase Wallet and Base,” Cunningham added.

Crypto labor market poised for expansion

President-elect Donald Trump’s crypto-friendly agenda sets the stage for growth within the US crypto labor market, according to Glocomms managing director Giancarlo Hirsch.

Trump’s focus on deregulation, he added, should bode well for decentralized finance, for example. 

“In a more relaxed regulatory environment, DeFi platforms can scale up and develop smart contracts that replace intermediaries, which currently have varying regulatory approaches across jurisdictions,” Hirsch said. “As things loosen, the industry is bound to see a strong demand for blockchain developers and smart contract specialists who can help build these solutions.”

Read more: Revisiting Trump’s crypto promises after his election win

Outside of developers, firms in DeFi, Web3 and blockchain infrastructure — currently leading the crypto hiring charge, Hirsch noted — are bringing aboard DeFi architects and product managers. A fight for talent for professionals with coding expertise is also likely, he explained.

The Trump administration may also encourage a deeper integration of artificial intelligence into blockchain, which could create positions focused on AI transparency and what Hirsch called “responsible innovation.” 

He added: “With more companies adopting blockchain … under the relaxed regulations of the Trump administration, cybersecurity roles like blockchain security architects and crypto security engineers will be in high demand to keep these systems secure.”

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