Crypto Bank Protego Trust Appoints Ron Totaro as CEO
Protego Trust Bank, a Seattle-based federally chartered bank serving the digital asset needs of institutional clients, announced Monday the appointment of fintech leader Ron Totaro as the company’s new CEO.
Totaro’s appointment follows recent appointments Protego Trust recently made to its board and an advisory board of industry and regulatory leaders.
Greg Gilman, founder and CEO of Protego Holdings Corp, commented on Totaro’s appointment: “Ron brings a solid understanding of digital asset and blockchain technology, as well as strong relationships with banking and private equity leaders. I look forward to working with him to to complete the OCC approval process and launch our much-needed banking platform for institutional investors to safely deposit, trade, lend and issue digital assets, including cryptocurrencies.”
Totaro brings over three decades of financial services expertise in building and leading fintech, banking, payments and blockchain companies.
During his career, Totaro has served as a manager, board member and advisor to public companies and private equity and venture capital-backed businesses. His professional service delivery earned him a reputation for scaling businesses while driving profit and revenue growth.
In his previous career, Totaro held leadership roles at analytics software company FICO, GE Capital and payment card company American Express.
Totaro also served as COO (Chief Operating Officer) at payment systems company ACI Worldwide where he led the transformation of the business while driving accelerated top and bottom line growth.
Most recently, Totaro served as CEO of Tassat Group, where he led the firm to become the market-leading provider of blockchain-based, real-time payment solutions that enable banks to tokenize US dollar deposits and transition from traditional payment rails to blockchain technologies.
Expands hiring despite market rout
Protego joins a group of crypto firms that have recently brought on new CEOs and other executives as part of efforts to drive their institutional growth.
In May, TRM Labs appointed former Assistant Deputy Attorney General Sujit Raman at the US Department of Justice (DOJ) as the company’s general counsel.
In June, Uniswap Labs hired the former president of the New York Stock Exchange, Stacey Cunningham, as its advisor.
In July, blockchain company Algorand hired Chief Operating Officer W. Sean Ford as its interim CEO. In addition, crypto finance company EQONEX also appointed Nick Cogswell as head of sales for its asset management business.
In late July, ZASH Global Media and Entertainment named Erik Finman as its CEO, overseeing the company’s expanding crypto and NFT initiatives.
Despite the ongoing market crash, crypto firms such as Polygon, Circle, Binance and others have continued to hire top talent from Big Tech firms, luring them to work on the next “big thing” in technology – Web3.
Executives at tech giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon are leaving to take jobs in the bustling crypto world.
The buzz around Web3 has attracted some of the brightest minds in technology. The Web3 movement proposes an overhaul of the internet to move popular online services to decentralized technologies such as blockchain.
Tech executives are attracted to the crypto industry because of its rapid growth and lucrative compensation packages.
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