New appointments, transitions, and unexpected returns
In April, crypto companies continued to strengthen their teams. Despite a sluggish market, hiring was particularly active in the areas of legal support, compliance, government regulation, and product promotion. Companies are clearly preparing for the next growth — building infrastructure, expanding legal resources, and strengthening communications.
Politics and law: the industry is maturing
Miller Whitehouse-Levine has left his position at the DeFi Education Fund and launched the Solana Policy Institute. The team already includes: Kristin Smith, former head of the Blockchain Association, Colin McLaren, Cedar Innovation Fund, Rachel Green Horn, Filecoin.
Paul Atkins, former SEC commissioner, has been appointed the new chairman of the SEC in the U.S. — a signal of a shift towards a more lenient regulatory policy.
Salman Banayi has become a lawyer at Plume Network (previously Uniswap Labs, SEC).
Linda Lacewell, former head of the New York state regulator, has become the head of legal at OKX.
Amanda Tumminelli has become the executive director of the DeFi Education Fund after the departure of Whitehouse-Levine.
Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, has joined OKX as an advisor.
Changpeng Zhao, former head of Binance, has become a crypto policy advisor to the government of Pakistan.
Corporate transitions: lawyers, operators, staking
Joe Salama is the new Chief Compliance Officer at Coinbase.
Cynthia Del Pozo is the CEO of Kraken in North America, focusing on Canada.
Jacob Wittman has become the head of the legal department at Plasma Foundation.
Thomas Um, former Jane Street, has joined Jito Foundation as CCO.
Diana Zhang, previously at BlockTower, has become COO at Grayscale.
Andrew Dempsey (Wellington, Fidelity) has taken the lead in institutional sales at Borderless Capital.
Stavros Psillos has joined Cryptopay as CCO with a focus on CFD brokers.
Projects and Web3 teams
Emre Tekisalp has become Chief of Staff at Uniswap. Previously — O(1) Labs, Coinbase.
0xWenMoon, a pseudonymous builder, has moved to Kaito AI (ecosystem management and special projects).
0xG00gly, former Gnosis and Uniswap, has joined Plasma Foundation.
Maximilian Crown, co-founder of MoonPay, has become CEO of TON Foundation.
Maartje Boos, former Messari, is now president of Medici Network.
Danny Nelson, formerly of CoinDesk, has joined the research team at Bitwise (focusing on Solana, Ethereum, L2).
Advisors and strategists
Kevin Weil (OpenAI, Novi, Twitter) has become an advisor at Circle.
Zac Prince, founder of BlockFi, is now a director at Galaxy.
Dana White, president of UFC, has joined VeChain as a strategic advisor.
Departures and transitions to other industries
Jonathan Hu left his post as CFO at Zodia Custody. Following him, COO Samuel Howe also moved to the traditional finance sector.
Mauricio Begelmans has left his position as chief legal officer at OKX.
Kristin Kim has left Galaxy to launch her own analytics brand focused on Web3 protocols.
What does this mean?
April showed: major projects are not waiting for a bull market, but are forming teams right now. Lawyers, former regulators, and institutional professionals are entering the industry in large numbers.
At the same time, crypto-native anonymities are becoming full-fledged players. All of this is a sign of market maturity and preparation for a new cycle.