Anchorage Digital, Komainu, and Binance top job moves in crypto

The crypto industry is a hot job market.

“We are in a bull market like we’ve never experienced before — there’s going to be so much work for us from a recruiting perspective,” Sam Wellalage, founder at recruitment firm WorkInCrypto.Global, told DL News.

DL News pulled together some of the past month’s major crypto employment news.

Exchanges

Martin C. Grant, a former chief compliance and ethics officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has joined the board of directors of crypto exchange Binance’s US arm.

Binance said Grant will help to oversee financial reporting processes and internal controls.

Grant is now global head of regulatory affairs and integrity at crypto-native financial-services firm JST Digital.

Prior to that, he worked for over 30 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, including as its chief compliance and ethics officer.

Grant’s appointment came as Binance’s holding company announced its first board of directors, including CEO Richard Teng and chaired by Barbadian diplomat Gabriel Abed.

Under Teng, Binance is reshaping itself to get right with regulators after a $4.3 billion settlement with the US government on money-laundering charges.

Kathryn Haun wrote in a post on X that she will be stepping down from the Coinbase board when her third term ends.

Haun said she intended to focus her energies on her venture-capital firm, Haun Ventures.

Haun has sat on the Coinbase board since 2017.

From 2018 to 2022, she was a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, another VC firm.

Prior to that, she spent a decade as a federal prosecutor at the US Department of Justice, where she led the probe into the hack of the Mt. Gox exchange.

Custody

Anchorage Digital has appointed its first company-wide chief operating officer, Aaron Schnarch.

Schnarch joins from Coinbase Global, where he was CEO of the crypto exchange’s custody business and vice president of product management.

Prior to joining Coinbase, Schnarch worked at Broadridge Financial Solutions.

At crypto custodian Anchorage, he will oversee business lines including custody, trading, and settlement, as well as sales, marketing and business development.

From May 1, Paul Frost-Smith joins Komainu, the crypto custody business of investment bank Nomura, as co-CEO, Financial News reports.

Frost-Smith will share the role with Robert Johnson.

Prior to this role, Frost-Smith founded and led Corinthian Digital Asset Management, a crypto investment management and advisory firm.

Analytics

After an almost 30-year career at the Internal Revenue Service, Jim Lee has joined crypto sleuthing firm Chainalysis as global head of capacity building.

During his time at the IRS — which included leading the agency’s criminal investigations department — Lee helped to conduct the largest-ever seizure of terror financing in an operation against Hamas.

DeFi

Ethereum development company Matter Labs has appointed Nana Murugesan as its first president.

Murugesan will oversee business, marketing, communications, and finance.

Murugesan was previously vice president of business development and international at Coinbase. Prior to that, he was a managing director at Snap Inc.

Are you a senior executive in a crypto firm who’s just got a new job or is leaving an old one? Want to update the industry on your big career move? Send a short bio and headshot to joanna@dlnews.com.