Fintech
JPMorgan’s New MD Comes From Cryptocurrency Firm, May Work Remotely
Bankers may not be welcome in the cryptocurrency industry these daysBut traditional financial firms are open to crypto talent. Two crypto executives have both recently taken more traditional jobs.
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Christopher Sharp, CTO of blockchain infrastructure firm Blockdaemon, joined JPMorgan two weeks ago as a managing director in the bank’s product teamWhile JPMorgan has moved other new arrivals to New Yorksays Sharp his role is remotebased in Florida. It has also started recruiting for its team, posting a job ad for an executive director and senior product manager in the digital space paymentsthat pays a salary up to $285k. This role, however, does not appear to be remote.
Sharp has been in the cryptocurrency industry for a relatively short time, spending just two years at Blockdaemon. Before that, he spent his entire career, 23 years, at Apple. He worked on Apple Pay for a decade and was its director of server engineering for five years.
Elsewhere, in LondonCoinbase’s UK division has lost one of its executives. UK COO and EMEA business development manager Peter Stilwell has entered the initial phase risk capital Creandum Company in June. The company says previous investments include Spotify, Clarify and Bolt. This marks a return to TradFi for Stilwell; he worked his way up from analyst to associate at HSBC in London, then became a senior manager at Bain & Co after interning there during his MBA.
Why are people abandoning cryptocurrencies for TradFi? Maybe they are looking for something more relaxed, if you can call TradFi that. Blockchain headhunter Michael Shlayen says that cryptocurrencies are “a rather stressful sectoris extremely volatile.” He says that large companies like Monetary base are “becoming very similar in the way they operate to TradFi and other technology sectors,” but the stress is “amplified due to the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies.”
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