White House and Coinbase make big crypto hires

Crypto hiring is a minefield.

Not only is it tough to find and manage the right talent, but a recent DL News investigation found that fake applicants are flooding job boards with doctored CVs.

Some of these bogus applicants appear to be North Korean nationals trying to infiltrate crypto projects for nefarious purposes.

Of course, a lot of legitimate hiring goes on too.

DL News pulled together the past month’s major crypto hires and reveals the top job the industry is hiring for.

Policy

Carole House was appointed special adviser for cybersecurity and critical infrastructure policy at the White House National Security Council.

House co-authored President Joe Biden’s 2022 executive order on crypto and digital assets.

She returns to government after a stint as “executive in residence” at Terranet Ventures, a venture-capital firm.

Paul Brigner said on X he is the new head of Coinbase Institute, a think tank and analytics company owned by the exchange.

Brigner is a crypto policy advocate and adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University. He has worked for Verizon and the Chamber of Digital Commerce.

Stellar Development Foundation has hired lawyer and researcher Marcelo Prates as policy director, Prates wrote on LinkedIn.

Stablecoins

Philip Gradwell joined stablecoin issuer Tether as head of economics, he said in a post on LinkedIn.

Gradwell was previously chief economist at Chainalysis. He joined the blockchain analytics company in late 2017.

“At Tether I will be responsible for quantifying the Tether economy and communicating the way Tether is used with regulators and stakeholders,” Gradwell wrote.

Trading firms

Crypto trading firm and liquidity provider GSR announced two co-CEOs.

Rich Rosenblum and Xin Song will share the role. Former CEO Jakob Palmstierna is moving to the role of president of the firm.

Rosenblum, who co-founded GSR, brings two decades of experience in trading, including nine years trading oil at Goldman Sachs.

Song joined GSR in 2019. He built the company’s Asia business.

Crypto exchange Coinme appointed Robert Villasenor as chief legal and compliance officer.

Villasenor joins Coinme from payments firm MoneyGram International. Before that, he worked for Starbucks in its corporate and securities group.

He’s also a member of the Texas Workgroup on Blockchain Matters.

Decentralised finance

The dYdX Foundation, which supports implementation of the dYdX protocol, appointed Chris Grundy to lead its marketing strategy.

Grundy previously worked at Glassnode, Coinbase, and Bitbond in similar roles.

dYdX recently launched Chain, a proof-of-stake blockchain network.

Jobs board

Coinbase, brokerage FalconX, and tokenisation platform Ondo Finance are all looking for a chief of staff to work closely with their CEOs.

Chiefs of staff are basically bulletproof vests for CEOs, dealing with conflicts and problems before they get to the head of the organisation.

It’s a senior role with good pay.

At Coinbase, for instance, compensation is advertised as starting at $206,125.

The company expects the successful applicant will lead special projects for areas CEO Brian Armstrong personally oversees and “serve as a Swiss army knife for solving any problem.”

The DeFi Education Fund needs a fall intern.

The lobby group says that if you’re passionate about decentralised finance, crypto, and regulation, you can apply now.

To see your career move featured in this roundup, email joanna@dlnews.com with a headshot and bio.