Crypto hiring: TradFi hires join former Genesis exec at VersiFi

The crypto trading and lending firm VersiFi stocked its C-suite with two traditional finance hires as it prepares to launch its platform in 2024 Q1. 

VersiFi brought on Sol Zlotchenko as chief product and technology officer and Daniel Zayfman as chief information and security officer. Both hires came from treasury management firm Hazeltree, where VersiFi founder Sameer Shalaby previously served as CEO. 

VersiFi announced it had raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Hunting Hill Global Capital in mid-November. In the press release, the firm said former Genesis managing director Martin Garcia would lead the firm’s sales, trading and lending functions as co-CEO alongside Shalaby. Garcia left Genesis the year before it went belly-up in the wake of FTX’s meltdown. 

Read more: Genesis attempts to recover $689M from Gemini in new lawsuit 

“We continue to ramp up — with planned key hires across other parts of the business — as we ramp up to full launch in Q1 2024. The digital asset industry has been undergoing a significant transformation (triggered by the 2022 crypto winter) to evolve toward a more robust next generation, which is attracting experienced [traditional finance] veterans that are excited about the opportunity to be part of this truly innovative technology shift,” Shalaby told Blockworks in an email. 

Crypto job postings declined in November

Data compiled by CryptoJobsList shows 239 crypto and Web3 jobs were posted in November, down from 372 in October. At the same time, crypto job applicants jumped to 3,339 from 2,422 the month prior. 

The platform’s founder Raman Sha told Blockworks that crypto hiring hadn’t significantly picked up either despite a recent run-up in prices and increasingly large funding rounds. Sha said he expects hiring to pick up in mid-January as part of the normal hiring cycle in the business world, and “also towards the middle of the year, as more Web3 startups raise fresh funding.”

Other notable hiring news

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is looking to hire a software engineer to lead its research on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). 
• Blast, the Paradigm-backed layer-2 which claims to have over $800 million in total value locked before even launching, is hiring a senior development operations engineer and a senior protocol engineer.

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