Kraken, one of United States’ leading cryptocurrency exchanges with average daily trade volumes in excess of $100 million has made some significant hires over the past few months in a bid to improve its service offering.
Matt Mason
The latest of those hires is an Ex-Sony Pictures executive who has been brought aboard to be in charge of Kraken’s marketing department. A blog post on the Kraken blog describes Matt Mason as the new Chief Marketing Officer, a position that has been newly introduced by the exchange. The blog post also details some other previous appointments to the Kraken team including Steve Hunt, Nelson Minier, Bob Zagotta, and Amry Beth Buchanan.
According to the Kraken post, Mason is the former head of Sony Pictures’ innovation lab 1-800-N0TH1NG a division that was tasked with game mechanics. Before that, he served as the marketing head and content officer with leading peer-to-peer file sharing technology company BitTorrent Inc. between the years 2011 and 2015. Matt is also an author penning the bestselling book on disruption and innovation ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma’.
In an interview, Matt said that:
“I’ve been interested and involved in distributed technology for much of my career, and there isn’t a better brand in the crypto space than Kraken. I’m incredibly grateful I get to work with this amazing group of people.”
Steve Hunt
Steve Hunt joined Kraken last April as the VP of engineering (also a newly created post at the time).
Hunt has previously worked as CTO at Jump Trading, a leading global quant-based trading firm that has recently been focusing on digital assets and as VP of Enterprise Technology at Goldman Sachs.
At Goldman Sachs, he “led multiple teams in the development, maintenance, and support of electronic and floor-based trading systems.”
Nelson Minier
Nelson Minier, an ex-Credit Suisse, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank UBS, and Morgan Stanley trader will be in charge of the (also) newly launched OTC trading desk as the Head of OTC Sales & Trading.
The Kraken post describes Nelson as having
“previously traded credit derivatives, sovereign bonds and corporates bonds in both the emerging markets and the high yield sectors. Nelson has dramatically elevated the performance of every team he has led and is widely regarded as a top trading manager.”
Bob Zagotta
Next up we have Bob Zagotta who joined Kraken back in June 2018 as the Head of Business Operations and Strategy. Formerly a Senior Managing Director of Strategy and Execution at the CME Group,
“has a 20+ year distinguished track record in developing and launching new businesses, driving growth, penetrating international markets, and leading transformational change at the enterprise level.”
Zagotta has a particularly unique skill in mergers and acquisitions a skill that may have come handy in the recently concluded deal in which Kraken acquired Londo-based crypto derivatives and futures trading platform Crypto Facilities in a ‘9-figure’ deal.
Mary Beth Buchanan
Finally, Kraken has a new addition to the legal department with the addition of Mary Beth Buchanan. She joins Kraken from the Bryan Cave LLP law firm with over 30 years’ experience in legal matters.
Her post has been described as a ‘general counsel’ for Kraken. As the crypto space comes under more strict regulatory provisions, her expertise should come in handy going forward.
