Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_623db5c6dfc0b" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Former legal counsel at Deutsche Bank joins Amber Group</li>
 <li>Ethereum scaling platform Polygon names a new chief information security officer</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Anthony Mazzarese and Brandon Mulvihill have left financial services company Jefferies to co-found a startup aiming to serve institutional clients in the crypto space.&nbsp;



Mazzarese was Jefferies’ global head of FX prime brokerage distribution, while Mulvihill served as its global head of FX prime brokerage. The two will now focus on bridging the gap between traditional financial services and digital assets through industrial-grade technology, trade flow expertise and attractive commercial terms, Mazzarese told Blockworks.



The former Jefferies executives are building a team and securing funding, he added. Additional details about the startup are set to come in the next few weeks.



Digital asset platform Amber Group appointed Ehsan Haque as its general counsel for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).



Haque joins Amber Group from his latest role as global head of legal and compliance for private equity firm Hamilton Capital Holdings. He has also recently worked as general counsel for investment technology platform AlphaSwap and Lending Block, an online digital asset lending and borrowing platform.&nbsp;



Earlier in his career, Haque was legal counsel for Deutsche Bank. He later joined Royal Bank of Scotland and was head of equities for Nomura’s EMEA legal department.



The hire follows Amber Group’s <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-trading-platform-amber-group-eclipses-3b-valuation-with-latest-raise/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">latest $200 million raise</a> last month led by Singaporean state holding company Temasek, giving the company a valuation of roughly $3 billion.



Web3 digital identity platform Unstoppable Domains hired Sajjad Rehman as its head of Europe and Nilkanth Iyer as its head of Asia.



Launched in 2018, Unstoppable Domains allows anyone to purchase a domain name that is minted as an NFT on the blockchain. It has more than 2 million registered NFT domains.



Rehman joins from Amazon-owned video livestreaming service Twitch, where he was vice president of business development for the EMEA region. Iyer previously held roles at software intelligence company CAST and tech goliath IBM.



The two executives will seek to help Unstoppable Domains onboard millions of new users to Web3 by partnering with wallets, exchanges and other industry players in Europe and Asia.



Mudit Gupta recently announced on Twitter that he would be joining Polygon as its chief information security officer.



Gupta also serves as an advisor at SushiSwap and a technical partner at Delta Blockchain Fund, according to his LinkedIn profile. He had worked for nearly three years as a senior solidity developer and then lead blockchain engineer for software development company Polymath.



“Polygon is the leading Ethereum scaling platform, and I&#8217;m stoked about our upcoming ZK rollups,” Gupta said in <a href="https://twitter.com/Mudit__Gupta/status/1505918543766122500" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a Monday tweet</a>. “Security has been a priority at Polygon, and I will be pushing it to the next level.”



Decentralized financial market infrastructure company Bosonic hired Paddy Boyle as its global head of clearing and derivatives. Founded in 2016, the firm offers infrastructure aiming to eliminate counterparty credit and settlement risk in digital asset markets.&nbsp;



Boyle was previously a partner at Goldman Sachs, where he spent 16 years as the investment bank’s global head of foreign exchange options. More recently, he was a managing director and global head of ForexClear at London-based clearing house LCH.



Former Treasurer of the United States Rosie Rios joined the board of directors of Unicorn Hunters, a platform that connects companies looking for expansion capital to achieve a billion-dollar valuation.



Rios’ experience will be key to Unicorn Hunters achieving its strategic objectives, which include making Unicoin the top equity-backed cryptocurrency in the world, the company announced Wednesday.



Unicoin, which <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/unicorn-hunters-introduce-unicoin-an-equity-backed-dividend-paying-cryptocurrency-as-a-solution-to-the-high-volatility-of-traditional-cryptocoins-301488540.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">launched last month</a>, pays dividends and is backed by equity in emerging high-growth companies.&nbsp;



The RLY Network Association hired Jeremiah Owyang as its chief marketing officer.



The non-profit supports the infrastructure and development of the RLY Network, which powers projects including Rally.io, Unite.io and SuperLayer.io.



Owyang is an advisor and angel investor in several early-stage startups, including blockchain gaming giant <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/metaverse-will-empower-creators-ceo-says/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Animoca Brands</a>. He also founded Catalyst Companies, a council for corporations that are seeking to innovate with new technologies.



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Latest in Crypto Hiring: Jefferies Execs Leave to Create Startup

Macauley Peterson

<div id="highlights-block_61a4daa6c17e1" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>MicroStrategy has purchased an additional 7,002 bitcoins at an average price of $59,187 per BTC</li>
 <li>Michael Saylor announced the firm&#8217;s latest round of bitcoin buying via Twitter after filing a Form 8-K with the SEC</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor championed his company’s latest big bitcoin buy <a href="https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1465305537210458115">on Twitter Monday morning</a> — a whopping 7,002 BTC totaling $414.4 million in cash with an average entry price of $59,187 per bitcoin.



The announcement follows the filing of a <a href="https://www.microstrategy.com/content/dam/website-assets/collateral/financial-documents/financial-document-archive/form-8-k_11-29-2021.pdf">Form 8-K</a> with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing reports that the purchases were made between October 1, 2021 and November 29, 2021, and continues the plan Saylor has been communicating for months.



In June, MicroStrategy <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/microstrategy-is-selling-debt-to-buy-more-bitcoin-heres-what-that-means/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced that it would be selling debt</a> to purchase more bitcoin. The company <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/microstrategy-buys-243m-more-worth-of-bitcoin/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">added $243 million</a> worth of bitcoin in September, bringing its total bitcoin buys <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/microstrategy-beats-estimates-for-earnings-revenue-buys-8957-bitcoins-in-q3/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">for the third quarter</a> to 8,957 bitcoins.



The latest SEC filing, notes that a June 14, 2021 Open Market Sale Agreement, with Jefferies LLC as agent, enabled MicroStrategy to issue and sell shares of its class A common stock, and that it had indeed sold an aggregate of 571,001 shares in the past two months, at an average gross price per share of approximately $732.16, generating net proceeds of approximately $414.4 million — the same amount used to purchase the new bitcoins.



As of today, November 29, 2021, the public company, already the largest such corporate holder of bitcoin, touts an astronomical 121,044 bitcoins on its balance sheet. Saylor reports that these were acquired for approximately $3.57 billion at an average price of around $29,534 per bitcoin, which would put the present value of the BTC at more than $6.9 billion today.



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Jeffries