BAYC’s Yuga Labs Adds MeebitsDAO Exec

Hedge fund figures Blue Macellari joined T. Rowe Price as head of digital asset strategy, she revealed on LinkedIn Thursday.

“This is what adoption looks like,” Macellari wrote in the post.

Macellari spent the past four-plus years as a managing partner at crypto hedge fund firm Dunamis Trading, according to her profile. There she launched and co-managed Dunamis’ crypto market neutral vehicle and formulated the company’s strategy.

T. Rowe Price managed $1.3 trillion in assets as of June 30. A company survey published in April found that 40% of kids believe crypto is the future of investing. A spokesperson for T. Rowe Price told Blockworks at the time that given the size of digital asset markets, their impact on capital markets cannot be ignored.

Crypto exchange OKX appointed Frederica Tompkins as director of brand marketing and Kim Murphy as event director.

Tompkins joins OKX from the luxury and fast-moving consumer goods sectors, having worked with brands such as Chanel and Ralph Lauren. Murphy comes from the world of event production and philanthropy, where she helped organize concerts, conferences and boutique celebrations.

Tompkins and Murphy joined during a year that has seen OKX strike partnerships with Manchester City Football Club, the McLaren Racing Formula 1 team and the Tribeca Festival. Børsen appointed Rachel Conlan as its global head of brand marketing and partnerships earlier this year.

OKX’s hiring of female executives coincides with its joint report with LinkedIn showing a lack of technical talent, as well as female professionals, in the blockchain industry. The analysis found that the sector had approximately four times more men than women, as of June.

Leading exchange Binance employee Karl LongWisdomTree Asset Management’s former director of digital assets and commodities operations, to lead its operations in Ireland, the Irish Independent reported on Monday.

A spokesperson for Binance declined to comment.

Long joined WisdomTree in February after working as a managing director at State Street for nearly a decade, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The manager is based in Dublin, Ireland, his profile shows. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told Reuters last year that the exchange was considering Ireland and France as potential headquarters and had registered a new entity in Ireland the following month.

Newly created NFT leaders for Yuga Labs and Dibbs

Yuga Labsthe company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, named Danny Greene to fill his newly created role as brand manager for Meebits after Greene spent the last eight months as general manager of MeebitsDAO.

Meebits is a 20,000 character NFT collection and trading marketplace. Yuga Labs acquired the commercial rights to Meebits and CryptoPunks from Larva Labs in March.

“The Meebits collection stands out not only for its artistic achievement, but also because it was the first 3D avatar designed for the interoperable metaverse and has always been a pillar of diversity and inclusion in web3,” Greene said in a statement. “You can already play with Meebit in over 20 virtual worlds, apps and games – and this is just the beginning.”

Sports NFT (non-fungible token) platform Dibbs has added executives seeking to grow beyond a collectibles market into a tokenization and custodial platform for intellectual property owners and collectors.

Dibb’s employee Ben Plomion as marketing manager and Bill Plumeri as its chief compliance officer.

Plomion spent seven years at contextual intelligence company GumGum, where he served as chief growth officer. Plumeri most recently led the global institutional compliance program at crypto lender BlockFi.

Prior to BlockFi, Plumeri was director of compliance at digital asset securities unit Securitize, where he designed and implemented a compliance program focused on the tokenization of traditional securities on the blockchain. He has held other leadership roles at the crypto exchange Gemini, as well as JPMorgan and BNP Paribas.

Luno hires policy manager from fintech unicorn Revolut

Institutional provider of technology for crypto trading Talos employee Neal Pawar as a strategic advisor.

Pawar is CEO of Qontigo, a subsidiary of Deutsche Börse Group that offers index analysis and risk solutions. He was previously chief investment officer in UBS’ wealth management group and CEO of Deutsche Bank.

Pawar joins Jennifer Hill, former chief financial officer at Merrill Lynch; David Cushing, former director of global trade at Wellington; and Tim Grant, Galaxy Digital’s Europe manager, on the company’s advisory board.

Headquartered in London Luna employee Thomas Tudehope as its global head of public policy to deepen its crypto investment app’s relationship with industry regulators, at a time when governments want to keep their eyes on the sector.

Founded in 2013, Luno was acquired by Digital Currency Group in 2020. Luno’s flagship app of the same name has more than 10 million customers in about 40 countries, according to figures from the company.

Tudehope was most recently head of public affairs at Revolut, where he expanded the company’s political team and led political engagement. He was also a former senior adviser to former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Decentralized finance-focused UK firm AQRU appointed Digby Trythe company’s co-founder, as its commercial director.

Before becoming co-founder and CEO of AQRU last October, Try previously worked as head of global sales at banking and payment platform OpenPayd and as vice president of sales for EMEA at Currencycloud, which Visa acquired last year.

Kamelia Gankovaformer CEO of Crypto.com’s Bulgarian outpost, is now COO of AQRU’s subsidiary Accru Finance.

Gankova has also served as director of customer service at the online payment company Paysafe.

In case you missed it

Core Scientific cut its workforce by 10% in the second quarter as part of cost-cutting measures to deal with market turmoil, the top crypto miner revealed on Thursday.

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said on an earnings call earlier this week that it made a “selective downsizing” of its team in the second quarter. Galaxy, a digital asset management firm, posted a net loss of $555 million during the three-month period.

Novogratz said the company is seeking to increase its headcount from 375 people to more than 400 by the end of the year. A Galaxy spokesperson declined to comment.

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