Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_6311ddb986884" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Law firm Brown Rudnick adds four partners for its digital commerce practice</li>
 <li>Crypto exchange Rain Financial and social media company Snap reveal layoffs</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Crypto-focused financial services firm EQONEX appointed a chief investment officer and head of investment research with extensive traditional finance backgrounds.&nbsp;



CIO <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-goodman-b46426/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Simon Goodman</a> most recently co-founded crypto investment firm PSG Digital and blockchain digital asset allocator Peregrine. Earlier in his career, the executive spent more than 15 years building out hedge fund Marshall Wace&#8217;s presence in Asia. 



Investment Research Head <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-nudel-3744275b/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Benjamin Nudel</a> previously spent nine years in investment banking at HSBC, Société Générale and BNP Paribas.



The hires to boost the company’s asset management business come after EQONEX <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/eqonex-latest-to-leave-crowded-crypto-exchange-space/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">revealed last month</a> that it would close its crypto exchange to focus more on its asset management and cryptocurrency custody business lines.



Blockchain privacy startup Nym named Andrés Arauz, a former director of Ecuador’s central bank and 2021 presidential candidate, as an advisor.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Nym is a decentralized platform that protects privacy at the network level of any application, wallet or digital service — including against traffic pattern analysis and metadata surveillance.



While leading the Central Bank of Ecuador, Arauz <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666143821000107" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">in 2011 headed</a> the first pilot of a central bank digital currency, which was fully deployed in 2014.



“For too long, countries across the world have been subjected to cybercolonialism and mass surveillance of their financial transactions,” Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin said in a statement. “While El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender is an interesting initial experiment, we’re happy Arauz has joined Nym to help develop an even more ambitious plan for financial freedom and privacy across Latin America.”



Galaxy Digital has hired <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlace/?originalSubdomain=uk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Andrew Lace</a> as a vice president of institutional sales within its trading division, a company spokesperson confirmed. 



Lace joins the company from Elwood Technologies, where he was a sales director since July 2021. He has also previously worked at London Stock Exchange Group, Refinitiv and Thomson Reuters.



Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz said during the company’s earnings call last month that there was “selective shrinking” of the Galaxy team during a second quarter, in which it <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/galaxy-digitals-stock-rises-despite-posting-555m-q2-net-loss/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">suffered a $555 million net loss</a>. Still, he added at the time that Galaxy intends to increase its headcount from 375 to more than 400 staffers by the end of the year. 



Law firm Brown Rudnick has added <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephendpalley/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stephen Palley</a>, Matthew Richardson, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonbyrne/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Preston Byrne</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/haileylennon/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hailey Lennon</a> as partners in its digital commerce practice. They are joined by associate Jeff Karas.



The four new partners join from law firm Anderson Kill. Palley, who was founder and chair of the technology, media and distributed systems group there, is set to co-chair Brown Rudnick’s digital commerce practice with Clara Krivoy.



“Our clients are increasingly in the digital asset space as founders, investors, or traditional corporate entities looking to use technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies as part of their business,” Brown Rudnick CEO Vince Guglielmotti said in a statement. “This team of supremely talented lawyers brings the type of insights and skills that will benefit our clients by enhancing our ability to offer an end-to-end experience, particularly for those in the technology space.”



Rain Financial, a crypto exchange in the Middle East, has cut staff to reflect “operational needs and market conditions,” <a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/coinbase-backed-crypto-firm-rain-financial-cuts-jobs-1.1813256" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg reported</a> Thursday.



The company raised $110 million in January from Paradigm, Kleiner Perkins, Coinbase Ventures and other investors. It did not reveal the number of workers it slashed.&nbsp;



<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/snap-web3-team-apparent-victim-of-20-downsize/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In case you missed it</a>, Snap revealed this week it would be cutting about 20% of its workers as it seeks to restructure the company to reduce costs. Some of those staff were focused on the social media company’s Web3 initiatives.



Most recently working as a research and development program manager for Snap, Jake Sheinman said in a tweet Wednesday that the company decided to “sunset” the Web3 team he co-founded last year.



Though augmented reality is one of three strategic priorities for Snap going forward, sources familiar with the company’s efforts told Blockworks that early Web3-related projects didn’t contribute to that focus. Only a few people were involved in exploring Web3 at Snap, the sources added.



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Latest in Crypto Hiring: Crypto Firm Taps TradFi Vets For Asset Management Business

<div id="highlights-block_62bf2533b47ae" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Metamask operations lead set to join the BitDAO ecosystem</li>
 <li>Abra and Bitpanda cut jobs while Kraken still on the hunt for talent</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The global head of business development for <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/9869818Z:US" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Citadel Securities</a> is set to lead the company’s joint venture focused on increasing investor access to crypto, Bloomberg News <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-28/citadel-securities-nazarali-leaves-to-run-firm-s-crypto-venture" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial were in the process of building a cryptocurrency trading platform, a source familiar with the matter <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/citadel-securities-virtu-financial-building-crypto-trading-platform/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told Blockworks last month</a>. Jamil Nazarali is reportedly expected to become CEO of the platform.



Citadel Securities did not immediately return a request for comment.&nbsp;



Web3 gaming company Immutable hired a former global head of product design for payments at Facebook to lead the protocol’s product design.



Henry Cho will help the company build an API-only user experience that enables mainstream developers to build simply.&nbsp;



“Immutable will continue hiring the best talent across the globe to continue building our vision of enabling the next billion players to truly own their in-game items,” Immutable co-founder Robbie Ferguson said in a Twitter post.



Andrei Serjantov joined crypto startup Nym as its chief financial officer. He is set to develop the company’s multi-purpose mixnet that helps enable privacy for any application, as well as the underlying finances of its NYM token.



Serjantov joins Nym from French banking group BNP Paribas, where he worked for 16 years. He was most recently the company’s head of electronic credit trading and head of flow credit quantitative research.



“As the bear market rages on, all eyes are on crypto to prove its worth,” Serjantov said in a statement. “Skeptics assume people join crypto to make a quick buck and scam the typical user, but those working through the bear market have something more to prove.”



The former operations lead for self custodial wallet MetaMask is set to join the BitDAO ecosystem to accelerate the adoption of Web3 gaming.



Jacob Cantele is now head of product strategy for BitDAO’s <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=RahCDqBPLaBstxmOiHGQa1CDZiEMesp8Rq0nyXTHCEpKTcTSFrZNgyb-TjJRHcgYqG_b2Y9OQw4S5FdLSsh8dg==" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Windranger Labs</a> and head of product for the <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=8VFB9yNCFXlRwlXlNa_pyfLRfykSOvleobU6PPWrNw6gy8oJY0kZWyRKlngn5dRx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Game7</a> DAO. 



Before working at MetaMask, Cantele led product for the Panvala grant funding DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), one of the earliest grant DAOs in the Web3 ecosystem.&nbsp;



NFT marketplace Magic Eden hired Joseph Doll to the role of general counsel.



Doll previously served as a corporate associate for Fenwick &amp; West, where he structured, negotiated and executed equity and token funding.



Web3 Ventures appointed Zach Rosen to its advisory board as the company gains Rosen’s expertise in software engineering and investment banking.&nbsp;



Rosen is a co-founder of Brydge, a startup that enables decentralized applications to deploy on one chain and accept payments from others. He said in a statement that he would leverage his network and background within the Web3 space to help identify and evaluate crypto projects for Web3 Ventures’ platform.



Crypto trading and lending platform Abra reportedly laid off about a dozen employees this week as market turbulence continues. Abra CEO Bill Barhydt <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/155209/abra-becomes-latest-crypto-firm-to-cut-jobs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told The Block</a> that the job cuts — representing about 5% of the company’s workforce — were done “purely as a cost-saving measure.”



An Abra spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. &nbsp; &nbsp;



In case you missed it, crypto exchange Bitpanda <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bitpanda-to-slash-nearly-30-of-workforce-citing-recession-threat/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">is letting go about a third of its workforce</a>. The company, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, wrote in a <a href="https://blog.bitpanda.com/en/way-forward" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letter to employees</a> that it wants to cut down its headcount from more than 1,000 to 730 as it seeks to improve its financial health.



Meanwhile, crypto exchange Kraken posted more than 600 new job ads in the United States in the last seven days, according to a June 29 study by <a href="https://cryptojobslist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crypto Jobs List</a>. The Kraken listings account for nearly 20% of the new American crypto job ads over the span.



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.