The cryptocurrency hedge fund BlockTower is hiring many (now former) Goldman Sachs employees. And it is not the only one to attract the exodus of the best brains on Wall Street to the lucrative sector of cryptocurrencies.
The best brains in the banking sector are abandoning Wall Street in favor of the profitable and fast-growing cryptocurrency sector.
The American hedge fund specializing in cryptocurrencies, BlockTower Capital, is recruiting the talents of traditional investment banks. They recently hired Steve Lee, a former manager at Goldman Sachs, as the company’s director.
Lee has over eight years experience in the investment banking industry, most of which he spent in the Asian offices of Goldman Sachs. The hedge fund will benefit from its contacts in Singapore and Tokyo, two of the most crypto-friendly areas in the world.
And this is not the first time that BlockTower Capital hires employees of Goldman Sachs. Previously, the company welcomed two other executives from the Wall Street giant. Former Vice President of Goldman Sachs, Michael Bucella, joined BlockTower earlier this year as head of strategic partnerships and business development. This was followed by the recruitment of Elizabeth Ralston, another former vice president of Goldman Sachs, as the company’s legal and complicated director.
BlockTower was launched in August 2017 by Matthew Goetz, a former engineer who worked on investment management at Goldman Sachs for 11 years, and Ari Paul, a risk management portfolio manager at the University of Chicago Investment Department .
Earlier this year, BlockTower secured $ 140 million in financing from family offices and venture capital firms.
Brain drain to the cryptocurrency sector
BlockTower is not the only cryptocurrency company to hire prominent Wall Street figures – in recent months many bankers have preferred to migrate to the lucrative world of digital currencies.
Earlier this month, the Kraken exchange hired a former Credit Suisse employee, Nelson Minier, to streamline its new over-the-counter trading operations, along with a former senior vice president of the Jefferies group, Nick Gustafson.
Coinbase, a leading cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, has also hired a number of former New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) employees including Christine Sandler, NYSE’s Head of Sales Euronext, and Eric Scro, Head of Finance at NYSE .
