Casey Wagner

<div id="highlights-block_619bbb83194fc" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Michael Safai believes changes happen at the startup level</li>
 <li>Dexterity Capital is looking to change the game when it comes to solving market inefficiencies </li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Partner and co-founder of Dexterity Capital Michael Safai is no stranger to the startup world.&nbsp;



“I am very much a West Coast startup person,” Safai said during an in-person interview in London, where the co-founder now resides. “We think that startups offer the best way to build, it’s so different from traditional finance.”&nbsp;



With a bachelor&#8217;s degree in astrophysics and economics and a Juris Doctor degree, both earned at California Universities, he has experience across a range of industries.&nbsp;



After working as a startup attorney and consultant, Safai decided to join the community full time. He worked at LiveRamp, a california-based data connectivity platform, for three years, first as the chief of staff and then the head of international. 



LiveRamp focused on looking at data and market inefficiencies, and it inspired Safai to start thinking about how inefficiencies in digital asset trading could be solved. He left LiveRamp in 2016 and co-founded Dexterity in 2018.&nbsp;



“When we started this in 2017/2018, I think some of my old colleagues were unsure of what we were doing,” Safai said. “Now, that sentiment has definitely changed as crypto has grown.”&nbsp;



Dexterity Capital, an algorithmic high-frequency trading firm focused on cryptocurrencies, is looking to solve some of the biggest challenges in finance, Safai said.&nbsp;



Despite having only a 13-person team, although Dexterity is hoping to double in the next year, the company makes between $2 billion and $4 billion in trades a day.&nbsp;



When asked if he fears a potential bear market in the coming months, Safai was unphased. The team specializes in market neutral strategies, he said, making the trades immune to bear or bull patterns.&nbsp;



In terms of regulation, a topic every leader in the digital asset space seems to want to weigh in on these days, Safai said it will be a long waiting game. Different nations and regulatory bodies are approaching the issue of cryptocurrency oversight in different ways and at different speeds, he said.&nbsp;



“I think that we are going to have to work with patchwork legislation for a while,” Safai said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in terms of regulation, it’s hard to see how exchanges and companies in this space will interact with regulators.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



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<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>

cryptocurrency

Gone Crypto: Dexterity Capital Co-Founder Michael Safai

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_61322c4066eef" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>“Every day there’s an evolution for crypto, there’s so much going on in this space,” she said </li>
 <li>“If you have too much regulation, it’s the iron fist that hurts growth and development and sends it off shore which isn’t good for a number of reasons,” she said</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Katherine Dowling is a Harvard Law School graduate with an extensive financial background from covering private equity law to prosecuting economic crimes for the US Attorney’s Office.&nbsp;In recent months, Dowling has “gone crypto” and taken the role of general counsel and chief compliance officer for Bitwise Asset Management.&nbsp;



Bitwise created the world&#8217;s first cryptocurrency index fund, the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund, in 2017 and provides exposure into the crypto asset space. Simply put, Bitwise is in crypto with asset management and financial ties, according to Dowling.



Prior to joining Bitwise, Dowling was heavily involved in regulating an array of financial themes.&nbsp;



For a little over a decade, she worked in the Economic Crimes Unit as the assistant US attorney to the US Attorney’s Office. There she covered a realm of economic crimes, commonly known as white-collar crimes from insider trading and Ponzi schemes to health care fraud and identity theft, she said.&nbsp;



“My last case before I left was an insider trading case that was later taken up by the Supreme Court. I was able to bring my then five-year-old to my closing arguments for the case,&#8221; Dowling said. Then three years later, after she had left the US Attorney&#8217;s Office, she and her son attended the Supreme Court hearing of that case as a guest of Ruth Bader Ginsburg who asked the opening question. 



After that, she was recruited into private equity and worked in finance again. From there, she started her own fund and raised a $266 million fund one for Luminate Capital and vested that into a number of B2B software companies. After fund one, Dowling departed and went to an asset management firm and while she was at that firm, she was headhunted for Bitwise.&nbsp;



Dowling knew the headhunter personally, so she said she took the call and listened to what they had to say. “I’ve always been fascinated by crypto and a good friend of mine from the US Attorney’s Office also went that direction,” Dowling added. She was interested in getting in the space with Bitwise because it “opens access to crypto investing to a number of individuals who are not as easily accessible,” she said.&nbsp;



“Part of the market can jump right in, but there’s a certain aspect of savviness you need to access crypto directly,” Dowling said. “Our funds allow diversification and a professionally managed solution that creates an avenue for access in a traditional instrument that might not otherwise be available.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Dowling’s regulation regards&nbsp;</h3>



Dowling said she sees crypto experiencing a breakthrough moment. “Every day there’s an evolution for crypto, there’s so much going on in this space,” she said. But as the space evolves, regulation for the industry is paramount, but it has to be done in a correct way, she said.&nbsp;



“If you have too much regulation, it’s the iron fist that hurts growth and development and sends it offshore which isn’t good for a number of reasons,” she said. The US economic growth would be impeded by moving crypto companies offshore and could also potentially create a national security issue.



“You want to make sure that the regulations are correct and understand businesses,” she said. “If you have folks who want to ‘do right,’ they will spend a fortune figuring out how to do it right or they just won&#8217;t do it in the US because they don&#8217;t want to face penalties for their efforts,” she added.&nbsp;



There’s a lack of clarity right now of who specifically is regulating crypto-based businesses, how they are regulating them and the definitions they use, she said. Dowling hopes in her new role she can help Bitwise and the crypto space reach a partnership with others where the regulatory work provides clarity and fairness for all sides involved.&nbsp;



“We’re looking for opportunities to partner and work with others toward that common goal. And other businesses are trying to do the same thing,” she said.&nbsp;



Many crypto-based businesses are open to conversations with regulators, they just need to keep the dialogue open and help evolve the space, while strategizing and creating innovative products and infrastructure that’s good for all investors involved, Dowling said.



As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats, she said.



Have your own&nbsp;<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Gone+Crypto">Gone Crypto</a>&nbsp;story to tell? Email us at news@blockworks.co.

Bitwise

Gone Crypto: From US Attorney’s Office to Bitwise General Counsel

<div id="highlights-block_6113db1868632" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The investment space has grown immensely since last year, as some of the world&#8217;s largest investors and technological companies like Tesla, Square and PayPal came out and publicly stated support for cryptocurrencies, he said. </li>
 <li>When it comes to investing funds, New Form Capital looks at three buckets to invest in: DeFi, infrastructure and blockchain-based trading and securities</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Meet Alex Marinier: the 29-year-old founder and general partner of New Form Capital, a venture firm investing in financial technology applications of blockchain technology.&nbsp;



His company invests in early stage entrepreneurs building blockchain-based financial technology and connects them to limited partners, or LPs, on Wall Street.&nbsp;



But this hasn’t always been his life.&nbsp;



Before he started New Form Capital in 2019, he was an investor at Sand Hill firm DCM Ventures, which has approximately $4.2 billion assets under management. Prior to that, Alex worked in private equity at Blackstone in New York underwriting secondary transactions for the company that has over $119 billion in corporate private equity AUM.&nbsp;&nbsp;



While at DCM in 2016, he figured out he could add value to the firm by focusing on frontier technologies, or emerging technologies, that investors didn’t have visibility into. Around the same time, mid-2016, he met Olaf Carlson-Wee, the founder and CEO of <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/matrixport-raises-100m-and-hits-unicorn-status-with-1b-valuation/">Polychain Capital</a>, at an event. Carlson-Wee spoke for about an hour at the event and Marinier said he became excited about the space.  



“I went out and did my own research over the next few months and really decided that [crypto] was one of the most interesting frontier technologies I’ve come across during my time at DCM, so I put together a 60-slide presentation that I presented to the global partnership on ‘Why Blockchain’ and ‘Why Now’ at DCM,” he said.&nbsp;



The presentation was well received by the founder of DCM, David Chao, and he gave Marinier the validation to do launching deals on behalf of the firm. For the next three years, Marinier said he led the company’s expansion into blockchain investing and helped bring exposure of the industry to traditional finance players.&nbsp;



“[Investors] might not be up to speed on crypto-native things — it’s not their day job to know what’s super applicable to them in the space — but I do bring these concepts up to them and you see a lightbulb go off,” he said.&nbsp;



During that time, Marinier said he saw a huge rise in interest and a lot of investors would ask him about what’s transpiring in the blockchain world and whether or not they should invest in the technology. It was then he realized through pitching to big investors that they were going to invest “big dollars in this space,” he said.



“The launch was a way for me to build out a track record and after a few years, I decided that I had so much conviction around this space and felt the opportunity was so large that I decided to spin-out and launch this seed fund called New Form in New York,” he said.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Creating a bridge </h3>



New Form Capital, as its name implies, focuses on a “new form of finance with an interest in investing in the intersection of Wall Street and crypto,” Marinier said.



“We went after strategic LPs from the Wall Street space whether they were macro-hedge fund guys, private equity guys or bankers. They all saw the headlines and it wasn’t their day job to be in the weeds on this stuff, but they all wanted a little bit of exposure,” he said.&nbsp;



When Marinier went to raise the company’s first fund, Fund One, of over $20 million, he tapped into the contacts he built during his time at Blackstone and DCM Ventures to raise the fund which they closed on a few months ago.&nbsp;



The company had their first close on September 30, 2020, and have invested in <a href="https://newformcap.com/portfolio">17 different companies</a> including the global borrowing and lending platform exchange <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/vauld-raises-25m-to-help-global-users-build-crypto-wealth/">Vauld</a>. “The moral of the story is that we’re off to the races at this point and almost fully deployed Fund One,” he said.&nbsp;



When it comes to investing funds, Marinier said they look at three buckets to invest in. The first in decentralized finance, or DeFi, because about one third of their funds are in DeFi networks and it’s a huge theme that’s only going to grow going forward, he said.



Second, the company looks to invest in infrastructure companies because “crypto is the Wild West and needs infrastructure over the next couple of years because it’s a high growth space that will drive investors,” he said. And lastly, the company looks to invest in blockchain-based trading and securities because they’re the backbone of new and improved trading infrastructure, he said.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Shifting investment sentiments</h3>



The investment space has grown immensely since last year, as some of the world&#8217;s largest investors and technological companies like <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/musk-tesla-likely-to-resume-bitcoin-payment-system/">Tesla</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/square-reports-bitcoin-related-revenue-up-200-buys-afterpay/">Square</a> and <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/paypal-ceo-smart-contracts-defi-apps-part-of-companys-crypto-plans/">PayPal</a> came out and publicly stated support for cryptocurrencies, he said.&nbsp;



“That’s obviously a good sign and what that did was it de-risked the space for a lot of institutions to start dipping their toes in,” he said.&nbsp;



The cryptocurrency market has experienced a huge uptick in fundraising, with blockchain start-ups raising a record $4.38 billion in Q2 of this year, according to <a href="https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/fintech-trends-q2-2021/">data</a> from CB Insights.



Additionally, the global fintech industry saw 88 rounds of deals worth over $100 million, up from 60 rounds in the first quarter of the year, the data showed. Although not all of those deals in the report went to cryptocurrency companies, the money and news speaks for itself as announcements pile in almost daily about new funding rounds in the crypto space.



“The conversation went from &#8216;it&#8217;s too risky to invest anything in cryptocurrency’ to ‘it’s almost risky not to have anything invested at this point,’ so we’ve seen an acceleration where institutions are really starting to look into deploying into the space” <meta charset="utf-8">Marinier said. 



Going forward, New Form will head out to market later this year for Fund Two, with a target of $75 million and hopes to bring on venture partners for that round.&nbsp;



Marinier said he expects more traditional funds to write checks in the space and larger macro funds will invest in crypto in the near future. “My hope and observation is that we’ll see more institutional money flow into the space,” he said. “We’re seeing an uptick of interest in the space,” he said.



Have your own&nbsp;<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Gone+Crypto">Gone Crypto</a>&nbsp;story to tell? Email us at news@blockworks.co.

DeFi

Gone Crypto: Investing in the Intersection of Wall Street and Crypto

<div id="highlights-block_6102bba17a24a" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Jesse Proudman and Raney first formed a hedge fund, Strix Leviathan.</li>
 <li>In an attempt to take what they built with Strix and make it accessible to the broader market, Raney and her team launched Makara Digital. </li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



From working at Deloitte to electrical work, Makara Digital co-founder Sadie Raney has had anything but a traditional career path. 



“After college, I started working at Deloitte, and then actually left to go work for my father&#8217;s company,” said Raney. “He had someone quit unexpectedly and he needed some help.”&nbsp;



At her father’s electrical company, Raney was working in accounting and handling other office work when she decided she had to get out in the field herself.&nbsp;



“I didn&#8217;t know what I was working with, when I was doing the accounting,” Raney said. “I decided just to go actually learn what the whole process was about, so I went and learned how to wire houses.”&nbsp;



Raney eventually went back into the corporate world, working at a variety of companies, including managed services company Aramark and Grand Big Yachts, a boutique yacht manufacturer in Singapore.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Getting educated</h3>



She went back to get her MBA at the University of Washington and her longtime love of entrepreneurship reignited. Since she was 18, Raney said, she had a fascination with helping people build companies, and now she had the education to back it up.&nbsp;



“I became the person that somebody would take out for beers and say, ‘hey, I want to start this business, but I don&#8217;t know what to do or about finding a license,’” said Raney. “I was kind of the operations nerd that would say ‘okay, here’s what you do.’”



When she finished her MBA, she started working for Blue Box, a private cloud startup in Seattle. The company’s founder, Jesse Proudman, went on to become Raney’s co-founder at Makara. Blue Box was acquired by IBM a year later.&nbsp;



After the acquisition, IBM had Raney leading the accounting, finance, and operations integrations, but it wasn’t a great fit, Raney said. She liked IBM and decided to take on a&nbsp;technology-oriented role.&nbsp;



“My team worked on working through the product, the whole product lifecycle, from engineering all the way through to sales, and then on to accounting,” Raney said. “We would identify gaps in the process and areas where the teams were misaligned, things like that.”&nbsp;



At the same time, Proudman, also at IBM, became a distinguished engineer at the company. He was placed on the blockchain team.&nbsp;



“He was going to build a blockchain accelerator, but then the funding was cut by IBM,” Raney said. “He reached out to me and said, ‘hey, I&#8217;ve got this idea I want to talk to you about,’ and so we started talking about this idea he had and then I said, ‘sure, why not?’”&nbsp;



The two decided to start their own company. It was late 2017. When it came down to deciding to leave IBM, Raney said, it was the technology that swayed her the most.&nbsp;



“The technical capabilities of the blockchain and what it can actually do to the financial system is definitely the thing that attracted me to it once I really started to dig into the layers of it,” she said.&nbsp;



Back in her Blue Box days, Proudman’s company Raney joined after completing her MBA, the marketing team had an idea to do a bitcoin giveaway. It was still the early days of crypto, one bitcoin was worth maybe $500, Raney said. The winner of the giveaway never collected their bitcoin, so the currency was still sitting with Blue Box when the IBM acquisition occurred.&nbsp;



“IBM acquired us, and they had a policy where they didn&#8217;t they didn&#8217;t allow cryptocurrency to be held, so they asked us to spend it, and at the time, I was just hardly anything you could spend BTC on,” Raney said. “I had to start researching bitcoin more to convince the treasury department at IBM that it was okay to have it. That was my first introduction to what BTC was.”&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The blockchain solution</h3>



Raney had first hand experience seeing how inefficient traditional financial systems could be, too, and blockchain seemed like the perfect solution to many cross-border payment issues.&nbsp;



“In high school, I worked at a company that had a lot of migrant workers and it used to drive me really crazy that when we would issue them paychecks, these workers would go down to the bank and they would cash the paycheck, and they would all pay a fee,” she said. “Then a lot of them then went over to the money gram and sent most of the paycheck to their families back home, and then they paid another massive fee there. And that always bothered me, just thinking that four hours of their labor went to fees to get and send the money.”&nbsp;



Proudman and Raney first formed a hedge fund, Strix Leviathan, and created a software platform to trade crypto, not an exchange, but an internal software platform that algorithmically trades the markets.



“We launched a hedge fund at the same time that we had the software up and viable, literally putting our money where our mouth was on crypto,” said Raney. “We&#8217;ve been trading that fund now for almost three and a half years. The software, since its inception, has just built out to be a really highly functional platform for everything from pricing ingestion to executing our algorithms.”



The fund was limited to qualified purchasers, though, due to regulatory constraints.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s always been something that&#8217;s just nagged at us, that our friends and family can&#8217;t participate in what we&#8217;ve built,” Raney said.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Educating the masses</h3>



In an attempt to take what they built with Strix and make it accessible to the broader market, Raney and her team launched <a href="https://makara.com/about/the-founding-of-makara" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Makara Digital</a>. It’s a platform designed for people who are interested in investing in crypto but lack the time to do deep dives on their own. 



“Education is a huge piece of that, making sure that people can learn about what cryptocurrency is, learn about investing in the space, but at the same time not have to spend eight hours on a weekend trying to figure out what to do next,” said Raney. “For example, we have a DeFi basket, so you can go on and read about all the tokens in the basket and then you can allocate to that basket. You&#8217;re not buying any index, you&#8217;re not buying a share of something, you&#8217;re actually buying those underlying assets, which are held for you at a Gemini account.”&nbsp;



Most of the misconceptions around crypto, Raney believes, come from a lack of understanding. Investors and regulators need to do their due diligence, but this asset class is not something to stay away from.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s so early, that there&#8217;s still a lot of bad actors that take advantage of insufficiencies and gaps in security from companies, so of course those are the ones that make the news,” she said. “We have investors that we&#8217;ve talked to for years before they decide to invest, and we are okay with that. We believe that we believe that this asset class is here to stay in the long term, but we also believe there&#8217;s a lot of stuff to stay away from.”&nbsp;



Have your own&nbsp;<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Gone+Crypto">Gone Crypto</a>&nbsp;story to tell? Email us at news@blockworks.co.

Gone Crypto

Gone Crypto: From Accountant to Electrician to Co-Founder of Makara Digital

<div id="highlights-block_60f9aeb83cef0" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Ariel Ling started her career on Wall Street at KPMG, she ended her stint in traditional finance at Deutsche Bank almost 20 years later </li>
 <li>Ling and co-founder George Cao started AscendEX, formerly BitMax, to revolutionize crypto trading </li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



“I grew up on Wall Street,” said Ariel Ling, co-founder and COO of crypto asset exchange AscendEX, referring to her career in traditional finance.&nbsp;



But after nearly two decades spent working for firms from Lehman Brothers to Deutsche Bank, Ling and a colleague saw where the future of finance was headed.&nbsp;



“We talked about crypto back in 2017,” she said. “The differences and the similarities between crypto trading, which was on the rise, versus equity trading. We saw a lot of similarities in terms of trading mechanisms and volatility.”&nbsp;



Ling’s last role on Wall Street was at Deutsche Bank, where she served as the American head of liquidity and investment products. The position granted her front row access to how financial institutions and corporate clients were approaching their investment strategy. She noticed a business opportunity.&nbsp;



“The idea behind AscendEX was to leverage what we&#8217;ve learned and what we&#8217;ve gained from a Wall Street perspective and see whether we can make some impact on this new industry,” Ling said.&nbsp;



Ling and her co-founder George Cao started BitMax in 2018. The company was rebranded to <a href="https://ascendex.com/en/register?inviteCode=J3B2KN9S" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AscendEX</a> in March 2021. 



“When I look at what intrigued me back in 2018, or at the end of 2017, when George and I were looking at this industry, there are a couple of things,” Ling said. “The way I look at it, blockchain has the potential to have revolutionary and evolutionary impacts on our life.”



Ling said her banking background led her to look at blockchain from a payments perspective. There were ways the technology could be used to streamline the process and maximize profits.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We do look at blockchain technology, even on the banking side,” she said. “The technology reminds me of the internet. I&#8217;m always intrigued by the technology, and I thought that there was huge potential back then.”&nbsp;



Crypto trading at the time, Ling said, needed a revamp, too.&nbsp;



“I noticed a lot of deficiencies, the market structures and integrations, all sorts of things,” she said. “I think it&#8217;s a very interesting, emerging asset class and it could have a pretty good future, if it goes the right way.”&nbsp;



The crypto environment has been a welcome change for Ling as she continues to build AscendEX.&nbsp;



“I was pretty happy after 20 years as a corporate environment, working with different investment banks and going from a VP all the way up to running the entire liquidity business,” she said. “I’ve assisted with a lot of entrepreneurial pursuits with different planning, but I&#8217;ve never done something myself. It’s been interesting, jumping out of the corporate suit and into a very chaotic entrepreneurial setting.”&nbsp;



The startup culture is just what Ling and Cao were looking for.&nbsp;



“People who know me well know that I really wanted something different,” Ling said. “Having gone through so many organizations, especially large firms, I see the structure, the institutional aspects, and the limiting factors. Coming up with your own business gives you a clean slate, the sky&#8217;s the limit.”&nbsp;



Today AscendEX is a global cryptocurrency exchange offering spot, futures and margin trading. The platform also provides wallet and staking services to clients.&nbsp;



Through growing the business, Ling’s understanding of the asset class has expanded.



“I used to think bitcoin was only for volatility, now I’m a lot more neutral about it,” she said. “I do think it&#8217;s a longer term play. And it is also an investment that you can play into your portfolio.”



Have your own <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Gone+Crypto">Gone Crypto</a> story to tell? Email us at news@blockworks.co.

Ariel Ling

Gone Crypto: Wall Street Veteran Catches Digital Assets Bug

<div id="highlights-block_60e72523e8fb7" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li> At only 19, Wald was able to get a first hand look at how fintech changes communities when she started with the World Bank</li>
 <li>After learning about GBTC, Wald and her partner were determined to build a better, institutional version that traded at net asset value</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Like everyone else in the world, Valkyrie CEO Leah Wald wishes she had entered the crypto space sooner.&nbsp;



“I didn’t work in bitcoin way back then,” she said. “But, from my other experiences, I was able to see what it could do for the world.”&nbsp;



Wald started at the World Bank while she was still in college studying international political economics.&nbsp;



“When I was 19, I was working at the World Bank, I was very lucky,” said Wald. “I was working in the vice president of the Africa region’s office and at the time, some of the colleagues in the office were working on something called M-Pesa.”&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Africa’s first digital currency</h3>



M-Pesa (‘M’ stands for ‘mobile’ and ‘pesa’ means money in Swahili) <a href="https://fintechmagazine.com/digital-payments/fintech-profile-m-pesa-africas-top-financing-service" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">is a mobile phone-based transfer</a>, payment and micro-financing system that was designed to expand banking opportunities to rural regions. It was launched in 2007 in Kenya and by 2010, when Wald was with the World Bank, M-Pesa was the greatest SMS-based financing system in the developing world.&nbsp;



“It was really the first time that I saw how well microfinance and a permissionless system could work,” Wald said. “So when I learned about bitcoin, to be honest, the value proposition didn&#8217;t seem extraordinary, it seemed very natural and made complete sense,”&nbsp;



Later, when Wald started learning about digital assets, her experience with M-Pesa helped her to imagine how digital assets could change the world.&nbsp;



“Bridging that gap in international development with communities that don&#8217;t have access to the traditional banking systems and are either unbanked or left out or opted out from all traditional financial vehicles, that use case for bitcoin has always resonated with me,” said Wald.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Leah Wald&#8217;s journey from M-Pesa to building a Better GBTC&nbsp;</h3>



Wald was at Thanksgiving dinner with her friends and family when she started talking to Tyler Jenks, former president and CIO of Lucid Investment Strategies, about bitcoin. He was very active in bitcoin, Wald said, and the two started talking about the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.&nbsp;



“The thing is, that was only Bitcoin security at the time,” Wald said, but she wanted in. Wald started working in bitcoin asset management full-time in 2017.&nbsp;



“Tyler and I wanted to make Lucid into the top specialized Asset Management shop in investing in GBTC,” said Wald. “I built that up with Tyler and really expanded lucid investment strategies. We co-authored the Hyperwave book and had a really fun run at it.”



Jenks passed away while the two were writing the book, Hyperwave Theory: The Rogue Waves of Financial Markets. Wald wound down their operations at Lucid, but she wasn’t ready to throw in the towel when it came to digital asset securities.&nbsp;



Wald met Steven McClurg, a former managing director at Guggenheim Partners, at a Satoshi Roundtable in February 2020. McClurg had just left Guggenheim.&nbsp;



“I was talking about how GBTC was very frustrating to me as an asset manager because of the premiums, It was not a good investment buy as a fiduciary,” Wald said. “Steven was talking about how he&#8217;s an expert in being able to structure esoteric products, so logically, we came together.”&nbsp;



McClurg and Wald launched Valkyrie shortly after.&nbsp;



“The original premise was actually that we would build a better GBTC that traded at net asset value, and that it would be an institutional product that institutions could do a HODL play, but a very transparent, democratic and high quality product,” said Wald.&nbsp;



Valkyrie raised its seed investment round and launched their first bitcoin trust product. It was looking like GBTC might start trading at a discount, which it eventually did, so Wald and McClurg decided it was the perfect time to file for an <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/wall-street-veterans-vie-for-sec-approval-of-new-bitcoin-etf/">exchange-traded fund</a>, which they did in January.&nbsp;



“I don&#8217;t think we fully expected the momentum with applications right after ours,” Wald said, referring to the slew of firms that have vied for securities and exchange commission approval since then. “But we definitely picked the right timing, I should say, for our hedge strategy.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Waiting on the SEC</h3>



Valkyrie has since filed for other digital assets ETFs and launched two additional trusts focusing on Polkadot and Algorland. Earlier this year, the SEC announced that it will be delaying its crypto ETF decision in order to gather more information.&nbsp;



“I think that SEC chair Gensler has made it known that he&#8217;s quite keen on cleaning up exchanges and that he sees many tokens as unregulated unregistered securities,” said Wald. “I don&#8217;t disagree, potentially, with the importance of going after those actors right now. But unfortunately, I do think that that is coming higher on the agenda for the SEC, and it&#8217;s kind of kicking back the spot ETF.”&nbsp;



The SEC seems to be more comfortable with a bitcoin futures ETF, Wald pointed out, so that is a fund that may receive approval sooner. She isn’t holding her breath for a spot bitcoin ETF anytime soon, she said.&nbsp;



To Wald, the issue with hesitancy when it comes to digital assets, whether from SEC officials or retail traders, lies with a lack of understanding.&nbsp;



“I do think that if more genuine participants in the ecosystem participate with education and guidance and start to engage on an educational level with DC, I think that that will be very promotional and very helpful,” she said. “I really hope that we see more of that, because there are such brilliant content creators in bitcoin, but it&#8217;s not always particularly geared towards regulators.”&nbsp;

Africa

Gone Crypto: Asset Management to Building Crypto Securities

<div id="highlights-block_60dded4c7d10c" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Trained in FinTech data, Huscher was ready to make the switch from traditional financial markets into digital assets</li>
 <li>The more Huscher learned, the more he came to understand that traditional finance and cryptocurrencies go hand in hand. </li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Lukka head of data and analytics Dan Huscher wants to see the numbers.&nbsp;



“I&#8217;ve always liked working with data,” he said. “Data in of itself is one thing, but what makes it really powerful are the insights that it can provide, ultimately to lead to more informed decision making.”&nbsp;



Three months ago, Huscher left the company where he started his career to tackle an entirely new challenge.&nbsp;



“When looking at what the next steps in my career would look like, I started to think about what the future would look like,” said Huscher. “Technology, finance and crypto, it&#8217;s clearly going to be such a large part of the future. That&#8217;s really what started to pique my interest.”&nbsp;



Huscher got his start in financial data at information provider IHS Markit, where he spent 16 years after serving in the US Army. He was the managing director within the financial services division and the head of data strategy for the global markets group, among other roles.&nbsp;



“I&#8217;ve spent my entire career within FinTech,” Huscher said. “I&#8217;ve worked side by side with technologists in every agreement that I&#8217;ve ever had, so the interaction of technology and finance is something that&#8217;s quite native to me.”



Huscher first heard about cryptocurrencies about years ago. It was a field he knew peripherally but not well until more recently.&nbsp;



“I first started to pay attention to it several years ago, I think probably along the same time as the rest of the universe,” he said. “I didn&#8217;t pay too close attention to it at first, but given what&#8217;s happening in the marketplace, and in the crypto space, it&#8217;s virtually impossible to ignore or even be unaware of today.”&nbsp;



Over the past year, Huscher has started to learn more about the asset class as institutional adoption and retail interest have grown.&nbsp;



“And looking toward the future of the intersection between technology and finance, crypto is clearly a large part of that,” Huscher said. “It&#8217;s rapidly evolving, it&#8217;s dynamic, there&#8217;s a ton of innovation happening.”&nbsp;



The more Huscher learned, the more he came to understand that traditional finance and cryptocurrencies go hand in hand.&nbsp;



“People may think it&#8217;s a brand new asset class, and while I think it certainly brings certain idiosyncratic issues to solve for, there is actually quite a bit of overlap between the digital asset space and what I would refer to as the more traditional or classical finance space,” Huscher said. “As traditional institutions adapt, they&#8217;re going to be required to fit crypto into their existing frameworks, and there&#8217;s more overlap than one would think.”&nbsp;



As Huscher thought more about how digital assets and blockchain technology would change the existing financial landscape, he realized it was time for a career shift. The more he thought about it, the easier the decision became.&nbsp;



“I had discussions with many people around me, the people that worked for me, my managers, the leadership and other people outside of my professional life,” Huscher said. “As I walked them through my thought process on why I was making the change, it was quite evident that this was going to be the next chapter of my career and something that&#8217;s going to be very exciting.”&nbsp;



When he heard about digital asset data provider Lukka, he was impressed with their mission and it seemed like the perfect fit for his FinTech background. It was clear to Huscher that as digital assets continue to grow, businesses are going to need access to reliable data.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“In my short time here, it&#8217;s clear that the opportunities ahead of us for data analytics are enormous,” Huscher said. “And I look forward to the challenge.” 



Have your own <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Gone+Crypto" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gone Crypto</a> story to tell? Email us at news@blockworks.co.

Gone Crypto: Following the Data to Digital Assets

<div id="highlights-block_60d4bea743c5c" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Originally from Tel Aviv, Israel, Meir completed his mandatory military service before heading to the US to study economics and computer science </li>
 <li>His first job at Goldman Sachs was similar to the army, said Meir. “You go in with a uniform, which is the suit, and there&#8217;s protocols and agendas for everything.” </li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Solidus Labs CEO Asaf Meir may come ‘late’ to the crypto space, relatively speaking, but he has certainly made his mark.&nbsp;



“I&#8217;m not one of those people that traded bitcoin for pizza in 2010, definitely not,” Meir said. “I learned about it on the trading floor.”&nbsp;



Meir came to the United States to study economics and computer science after serving in the Israeli Defense Force. He interned with Microsoft and worked with a variety of startups in the tech space before eventually moving to Goldman Sachs.



“I’m from Tel Aviv, Israel, and I completed the mandatory army service there,” said Meir. “I ended up at Goldman Sachs, years later, and Goldman, in many ways, was similar to the army, you go in with a uniform, which is the suit, and there&#8217;s protocols and agendas for everything.”&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">A major gap in the industry</h3>



Meir started on the electronic trading desk at Goldman. There his role combined his two areas of study and was the perfect place to learn capital markets and trading from some of the greatest minds in the industry, he said. And, it was at Goldman that he first came across digital assets.&nbsp;



“It was around 2017 when I stumbled across a blockchain edition of the Goldman Research Division on the trading floor, and that&#8217;s really when I opened my eyes into this whole different realm of things,” he said.&nbsp;



Meir’s computer science brain started to kick in as he delved deeper into crypto, and that’s when he saw a major gap in the market for security.&nbsp;



“One of the things that became clear, in our view, was the need for tailored risk mitigation tools,” said Meir. “In order to usher in mainstream adoption and institutional adoption in two to three years time, tailored risk mitigation tools were going to be essential.”&nbsp;



Meir saw that the traditional financial world had doubts about digital assets because cryptocurrencies presented a host of concerns around volatility, security and pricing. Many in the traditional finance space didn’t know how to approach these problems.



“One of the signals we&#8217;ve seen time and time again is the SEC’s <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/sec-postpones-decision-on-valkyrie-bitcoin-etf-to-august/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rejection</a> of a bitcoin ETF due to the lack of sufficient trade surveillance,” said Meir. “There is a notion that bad actors are manipulating price and volumes on different executing platforms, whether it be exchanges, broker dealers, OTC desks, liquidity providers and the like. We saw this happening, and we started creating a thesis around the need for tailored surveillance solutions.”&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Focusing on market manipulation</h3>



At the time, Meir said, there was a major focus on anti-money laundering (AML), and he noticed that no one seemed to be looking at other risk areas, like market manipulation.&nbsp;



“A lot of people were discussing AML, which is extremely important,” he said. “But a lot of people were not yet considering the blatant manipulation that was taking place on different execution venues. In fact, we think that bad actors can gain much more from manipulating volume and prices, then possibly money laundering.”&nbsp;



Cryptocurrencies are an entirely new asset class, Meir said, and the way bad actors go about manipulating this new market is something the financial world has never encountered before.&nbsp;



“Quite literally, the way bad actors are manipulating this market is different,” he said. “Coupled with the evolving regulatory landscape, it really rendered the incumbents’ ability to point out manipulation obsolete.”&nbsp;



This realization prompted Meir and his co-founders to leave Goldman to launch Solidus Labs, a market surveillance and risk monitoring hub tailored for digital assets.&nbsp;



“The decision to leave was triggered by a combination of what I call the ‘Israeli entrepreneurial bug,’ and characteristics of the industry that really appealed to me, which is the inclusion and accessibility that the crypto ecosystem fosters,” Meir said.&nbsp;



That entrepreneurial bug has proved its worth so far. In May, Solidus <a href="https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/50061" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">closed</a> its Series A funding round, led by Evolution Equity Partners. The company also experienced a 400% increase in inbound demand, which Meir attributes to increased institutional interest and the growing understanding that market participants need to take regulatory restraints seriously.&nbsp;



“Colleagues and mentors that know me well, I don&#8217;t think were too surprised,” Meir said. “I always like to challenge the norms, it&#8217;s almost in my DNA. I told everyone what appealed to me so much about this industry, and that is that this is a blank canvas, we can create something out of nothing.”



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Goldman Sachs

Gone Crypto: From Goldman Sachs to Digital Asset Risk-Monitoring Start-Up Solidus

<div id="highlights-block_60cb69598233f" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Murphy started with the FBI when he was 26-years-old, first as a special agent </li>
 <li>Murphy left the FBI in 2011 and went on to work on Wall Street for investor Ronald Perlman</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



After more than two decades with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tim Murphy knows the secret to staying ahead. 



“I’ve always paid close attention to technology,” said Murphy, CEO and president of Consortium Networks. “In the FBI, we had to stay ahead of the bad guys and in order to do that, you really have to be advanced on the technology side.”&nbsp;



Murphy started with the FBI when he was 26-years-old, first as a special agent. He went on to become chief financial officer, chief operating officer and finally deputy director over the course of his 23-year-long career.&nbsp;



Murphy left the FBI in 2011 and went on to work on Wall Street for investor Ronald Perlman, who had a holding company called MacAndrews and Forbes. The group held a variety of companies, from Revlon to scientific gaming companies. Murphy worked in compliance, mostly doing due diligence and cybersecurity. 



“I was vice president of compliance, doing due diligence, cybersecurity, you name it, anything that came up in the business,” said Murphy. “I wanted to run my own company, so I left there after four years and took over a startup in Northern Virginia, called Thomson, owned by Thomson Reuters.”&nbsp;



Murphy served as president at Thomson Reuters Special Services from 2015 to 2019. Right when he started the role, he decided to take a closer look at digital assets.&nbsp;



“I&#8217;ve always been an active reader, looking ahead, trying to stay ahead of the curve, whether it was in the compliance space, investing space and the like,” said Murphy. “In 2015, I started really learning crypto, following a number of individuals that were really explaining what cryptocurrencies were and the bitcoin movement. It took about a year to really get educated and believe in the future of digital currencies and cryptocurrencies.”&nbsp;



He started investing in 2017. Murphy, who also serves on the board of Western Union, saw that digital assets were not all that different from traditional financial systems, and that’s what attracted him initially.&nbsp;



“I really believe that digital currencies, the crypto world, is similar to what we do at Western Union,” said Murphy. “The attractive thing about Western Union is that we&#8217;re banking the unbanked around the world, we&#8217;re helping immigrant populations get funds to relatives. This is a movement, a global movement, to help connect people, for financial freedom and hopefully it’s also a store of value. I saw the value in that.”&nbsp;



As a fairly early entrant into the crypto market, Murphy experienced the typical skepticism from his peers and colleagues.&nbsp;



“A lot of people think that you probably had to be pretty silly to get involved in the space early because of the fluctuations in the price. It would go from $2,000 up to $20,000 and back down to $3,000. It’s volatile,” said Murphy. “I actually started investing in it because I thought it was the future and I wanted to put my money where my mouth is.”



Murphy was putting his money where his mouth was when he met Larry Pfeifer, founder of Consortium. Pfeifer served in the Navy before holding positions at Philadelphia Stock Exchange, BlueCoat Systems, and eventually CrowdStrike. Murphy and Pfeiffer began to think about ways to advance technology even further.&nbsp;



“We had an idea of starting <a href="https://consortium.net/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Consortium Networks</a>, which was a networking organization for free to help chief information security officers defend their companies against cyber attacks,” said Murphy. 



Murphy left Thomson Reuters in 2019 to join Consortium as CEO and president in 2019. He also was appointed to the board of directors at digital asset trading network <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/apifiny-reveals-pre-ipo-plans/">Apifiny</a> last month.&nbsp;



Throughout all of his different roles, spanning government, finance, cybersecurity, Murphy’s belief in technology’s power has remained constant.&nbsp;



“If you believe in technology, shaping this world, which it has, I mean look at the internet,” said Murphy. “If you believe that technology is going to change the world, you have to believe in blockchain. What’s the next greatest thing that’s going to change the world? This is it.”



Have your own <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Gone+Crypto">Gone Crypto</a> story to tell? Email us at news@blockworks.co.

Consortium Networks

Gone Crypto: From FBI Agent to Crypto Company CEO

<div id="highlights-block_60c26c75db333" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>After graduating from Harvard with a degree in computer science, Harrison wasn’t sure what would come next</li>
 <li>Harrison interned at Jane Street before starting as a trader on the American depositary receipts desk</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



FTX.US president and former Jane Street software developer Brett Harrison straddles two worlds.&nbsp;



“What I discovered about myself at Jane Street was that I was able to pull together the business side and the technology side,” said Harrison. “I was the translator between these two areas and I helped the business really understand what it is they want from technology.”&nbsp;



After graduating from Harvard with a degree in computer science, Harrison didn&#8217;t know what would come next. 



“I wasn&#8217;t exactly sure what I wanted to do with computer science, I thought maybe I would become a professor or a teacher of some kind, maybe work for a big tech firm,” said Harrison. “But I had a number of friends, either my major or similar majors, who had done internships at different kinds of proprietary trading firms or hedge funds, and particularly a couple that had worked at Jane Street.”&nbsp;



Harrison interned at Jane Street before receiving a full time offer. He started on the American depositary receipts desk as a trader.&nbsp;



“It was an incredibly exciting place to be, just learning from all these amazingly smart people who are really the forerunners, they&#8217;re the experts in their field,” said Harrison.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Drawn toward technology</h3>



The business side was fast-paced and exciting, but Harrison found himself drawn to the technology.&nbsp;



“Even though I was a trader, I found myself very attracted to all of the different technology projects that were happening,” he said. “I really wanted to use my computer science background.”&nbsp;



Harrison decided to get more involved with different initiatives on the tech side, from improving the user interface and the automated trading systems to rewriting spreadsheets. He decided shortly after to move into a firm-wide technology and management role.&nbsp;



“My role became the person that would walk around all the different desks and ask people ‘what are you guys working on? What are you excited about? How can I help you?,’” said Harrison. “I would ask them what features they wanted, and I found that different desks often wanted the same things.&nbsp;



It became Harrison’s practice to gather different teams in a room together to work out different solutions that could benefit everyone.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The animal rights angle</h3>



It was while working with Jane Street that Harrison first became interested in digital assets. He and Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, became close when they overlapped at Jane Street.&nbsp;



“It’s funny, a mutual acquaintance told us that we were actually very involved in donating to the same animal rights charity, so that kind of brought us together,” said Harrison. “We were both vegans and we bonded over that.”



Bankman-Fried left Jane Street to work with the Center for Effective Altruism in 2017.&nbsp;



“I was still at Jane Street after he left, but it was around the same time that Jane Street began getting into cryptocurrencies as well,” said Harrison. “I got to see some of the beginnings of real institutional involvement in that digital asset space.”



Harrison was intrigued, but skeptical.&nbsp;



“I remember back then thinking that this was the Wild West, just in terms of the exchanges and what their technology looked like, and managing different wallets and trying to move currencies around between different exchanges,” said Harrison. “It was really the beginning of something, and it had a very, very long way to go. But it was a really exciting space.”



Harrison stayed with Jane Street for about eight years before he moved to Chicago with his family. He worked for Headlands Technologies for about a year as a software developer. Most recently, Harrison served as the head of semi-systematic technology at Citadel Securities. Crypto was something he had always kept an eye on, but it wasn’t until very recently that he became professionally involved in the space.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">A surprise move</h3>



“Sam and I had kept in touch a lot over the years and he had kept me up to date on a lot of the interesting things that were going on in his world, to say the least,” said Harrison. “We were just texting and he said ‘by the way, we have a lot of exciting things happening here at FTX, and we would love to have you.’” 



In a move that surprised even himself, Harrison started as the president of FTX.US in May 2021. 



“I hadn&#8217;t thought very much about the digital asset industry in terms of something that I could work in,” said Harrison. “But then, after discussing a possible career with FTX in the US, I started to really dig deep into what&#8217;s going on with this industry and thought ‘wow, this is just an opportunity of a lifetime to be a part of this amazing movement.’”&nbsp;



In his short time at FTX.US, Harrison has found that technology, finance and crypto aren’t really all that different after all.&nbsp;



“You know, as a software engineer, in many ways an exchange, writing an exchange, running an exchange is completely different from any of the work that I had done before. It occupies a completely different place in the financial ecosystem,” said Harrison. “But there&#8217;s a lot of overlap in terms of the need to build something that scales and is built in a financially responsible way.”



His traditional finance and technology peers were excited about the career change, Harrison said.&nbsp;



“We’ve really reached the point now where crypto is no longer something that traditional finance firms can ignore,” he said. “Many different firms have discussed getting into crypto, imminently. It&#8217;s probably the most talked about asset in the financial space right now.”&nbsp;



Have your own <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Gone+Crypto">Gone Crypto</a> story to tell? Email us at news@blockworks.co.

Gone Crypto: FTX.US President Brett Harrison

<div id="highlights-block_60b8e73e8c742" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Mognetti&#8217;s initial attraction to bitcoin was the price</li>
 <li>The nature of blockchain, the fixed supply and the immutability, all drew Mognetti in</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



CoinShares co-founder and CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti has an advantage over many crypto investors today: he was early.&nbsp;



“I&#8217;m not going to say that we were able to connect the dots before the dots even existed,” Mognetti said, “but we could see a sort of path forward.”&nbsp;



Mognetti, an economist by training, has been with CoinShares since before it even became CoinShares.&nbsp;



“Before CoinShares existed, there was a company called Global Advisors, which was focused on commodities,” said Mognetti. “It was founded by my two current business partners, Russell Newton and Danny Masters. I joined them in this commodity lifecycle at the very end.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-style-default"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="668" height="418" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CoinShares-Jean-Marie-Mognetti.jpg" alt="Jean-Marie Mognetti, Coinshares" class="wp-image-4358" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CoinShares-Jean-Marie-Mognetti.jpg?w=668 668w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CoinShares-Jean-Marie-Mognetti.jpg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CoinShares-Jean-Marie-Mognetti.jpg?w=411 411w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CoinShares-Jean-Marie-Mognetti.jpg?w=417 417w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CoinShares-Jean-Marie-Mognetti.jpg?w=350 350w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CoinShares-Jean-Marie-Mognetti.jpg?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 668px) 100vw, 668px" /><figcaption>Jean-Marie Mognetti, CEO, CoinShares</figcaption></figure>



Masters and Newton, both oil industry and JPMorgan veterans, brought Mognetti on in 2012. The commodity investment firm ran from 1998 until early 2013. Global macro investors had largely begun moving out of commodities and into equities and fixed income at the time. Global Advisors needed a new investment area.&nbsp;



“We believe a lot in global cycles and supercycles, and commodities were out,” Mognetti said. “It was time to find a new cycle.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Looking for a new cycle </h3>



It was in looking for this ‘new cycle’ that they came across digital assets.&nbsp;



“Our core was deep value thematic investments, and we stuck to that,” Mognetti said. “In the process, we discovered bitcoin.”



The initial attraction to bitcoin, Mognetti said, was the price, which was around $700 toward the end of 2013. They foresaw lucrative returns, and they were correct.&nbsp;



“We discovered the crypto cycle in late 2012, early 2013 and started to refocus our business on that by 2014,” Mognetti said. “We went into crypto with our eyes wide open on bitcoin’s price more so than the technology.”&nbsp;



Mognetti started trading digital assets and began to understand the ecosystem more. Crypto was nothing like other asset classes, he noted.



“What we really discovered, going into crypto, was the trading aspect,” he said. “Especially in the early days, crypto was a very illiquid, patchy market. It was very volatile. There were multiple jurisdictions and it was trading 24/7, 365 days a year, which is not what happened in commodities.”&nbsp;



As they continued with their digital asset research, Mognetti said, the technology started to intrigue them more.&nbsp;



“We discovered the technology a little bit after we got into trading. We said, ‘well, what is really behind this?’” Mognetti said. “We started doing all the mathematical computation to understand everything about mining and how the technology works.”&nbsp;



It was then that Mognetti started to see the possibilities of crypto and how it could change global financial landscapes.&nbsp;



“I grew up in France and I have a lot of friends who come from countries where the economies have been decimated,” Mognetti said. “I saw some very distressed situations, and I have always been bothered by that, ever since I was a kid. It’s something that has always stayed in the back of my mind.”&nbsp;



The nature of blockchain, the fixed supply and the immutability, all drew Mognetti in.&nbsp;



“I realized that there is something to believe in here. There&#8217;s something to explore and to keep pushing toward,” he said. “Now, seven years later, we feel very blessed to have kept pushing in that direction. We were armed with the truth early on and had the courage to follow our convictions.”&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The digital asset shift</h3>



By 2014, Global Advisors had completely shifted into the digital asset space. The <a href="https://coinshares.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CoinShares</a> name followed in 2016, although the path into crypto was not easy, especially from a regulatory standpoint.&nbsp;



“Between the SEC, the IRS and the CFTC, there’s not a single person or single regulatory or even quasi-regulatory environment in the US that will agree on the treatment of digital assets,” Mognetti said. “We knew the final products had the potential to be fantastic, but the in-between was quite chaotic.”&nbsp;



CoinShares went on to create the first regulated bitcoin hedge fund, exchange-traded bitcoin product and exchange-traded Ethereum product, among other services.&nbsp;



“You need to bet against the consensus,” Mognetti said, loosely quoting investor Ray <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bitcoin-convert-dalio-bearish-on-american-future-of-free-finance/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dalio</a>. “And that’s what we did.”&nbsp;



There were certainly skeptics that thought <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinshares-reaches-4-5b-in-aum-ceo-calls-for-multi-decade-supercycle/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CoinShares</a> was too early for its time, and there are still some today that point to the current selloff in the crypto market with doubt. Mognetti, however is not concerned. They may have entered the space with the price in mind, but the technology is what made them stay.&nbsp;



“The price is a very bad indication of the technology,” said Mognetti. “When the price has been down in the past, the technology that has been built has been incredible. People don&#8217;t stop building because the price goes up or the price goes down.”



Have your own&nbsp;<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Gone+Crypto" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gone Crypto</a>&nbsp;story to tell? Email us at news@blockworks.co.

CoinShares

Gone Crypto: Mognetti and the Birth of CoinShares

<div id="highlights-block_60afd5a1db986" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>After a stint on Wall Street, Veltman spent five years at Salesforce as the senior director of infrastructure finance and strategy before joining Anchorage in 2020</li>
 <li>Veltman saw blockchain as the logical next step in financial innovation</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Anchorage head of finance Julie Veltman knows a good opportunity when she sees one. 



“People that know me expect me to follow my gut and my instincts when it comes to making career decisions that maybe aren&#8217;t obvious,” Veltman said. 



Veltman has a range of experience with finance. She began her career on Wall Street before moving into financial infrastructure.&nbsp;



“I spent 12 years on Wall Street, initially at Merrill Lynch, and then I moved to a boutique investment firm,” she said. “I’ve taken risks in my career. I was on a promotion path at Merrill Lynch and I decided to leave to join a smaller firm.”&nbsp;



After her stint on Wall Street, Veltman spent five years at Salesforce as the senior director of infrastructure finance and strategy before joining Anchorage in 2020.&nbsp;



“I really span two distinct verticals of traditional finance; traditional corporate finance and then traditional Wall Street finance,” she said.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Veltman first learned about digital assets while at Salesforce. She was working closely with the technology and engineering teams at the time and learned about their interests and investments.&nbsp;



“I heard about cryptography from the security engineering team,” Veltman said. “And then, as I started learning about blockchain, it really resonated with me from an intellectual standpoint.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">A logical next step</h3>



Veltman started to dive deeper into digital assets in 2019. Investors and institutions were just beginning to come around to the idea of crypto, but the space was still largely misunderstood. Anchorage approached Veltman about the head of finance position and she became excited about the role.&nbsp;



“As I started looking into Anchorage and preparing to figure out if this was something I wanted, that&#8217;s when I really dove deep into digital assets,” she said. “It was like the two distinct verticals of my career coming together with this role. It combines my Wall Street and capital markets experience with my technology finance experience into one role, so it made a lot of sense for me.”&nbsp;



Veltman saw blockchain as the logical next step in financial innovation. It wouldn’t be the first technology to disrupt the status quo, she said.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Blockchain technology is really similar to some of the technological revolutions that have come in the past,” she said. “Things like the internet and mobile, there was a period of time when those were new technologies and it took time for broader adoption. Now they&#8217;ve just become part of the mainstream.”&nbsp;



Veltman understood early on that the <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/fis-opens-bitcoin-floodgates-for-banks/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">two worlds of finance</a> will have no choice but to eventually merge. 



“In the future, there will not be this separation between traditional finance and digital asset finance, and it&#8217;ll just be finance.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">There’s more than one coin in crypto</h3>



When she decided to take the job with <a href="https://www.anchorage.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Anchorage</a> and make the switch into crypto, some of her peers were skeptical. As digital assets become more and more mainstream though, those same people are starting to come around, Veltman said. 



“Some of the people that questioned my decision to leave Salesforce a little over a year ago are now saying ‘wow, I wish I bought some bitcoin when you moved over a year ago,’” said Veltman. “So the tone of the conversation has definitely changed.”&nbsp;



Veltman is looking forward to institutions and investors learning more about crypto. There is more to the industry than one coin, she said.&nbsp;



“Institutional adoption of crypto is going to be more than institutions buying bitcoin or ethereum, it is going to be more than institutions focused on a specific cryptocurrency. One of the most exciting things to me when I first joined was that Anchorage isn&#8217;t making the bet on a specific currency.” 



Have your own <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Gone+Crypto" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gone Crypto</a> story to tell? Email us at news@blockworks.co.