Monthly Mint — 11.2023
A curated selection of hires and promotions from across crypto and web3. If you would like to sign up to receive this newsletter, please visit our website.
We’re Following
It’s the end of another month, not to mention the end of an era — 💫RIP Byron Wien, Charlie Munger and Henry Kissinger — and the beginning of our holiday season. 🦃🎅🏼🕎 Since your Thanksgiving conversation was likely dominated by OpenAI and the prodigal CEO, we’d like to bring you a few stories that didn’t get the coveted pre-pie air time. 🥧
Fresh off the Cyber Monday deal press, web3 fundraising is rocking — around the Christmas tree, that is…🎄Sorry, too soon? 😏 Web2-UX-meets-web3-products startup Privvy raised an $18M Series A. Blur founder Pacman raised a cool $20M for a new L2 called Blast with an additional $40M coming in to support the building of DApps in the ecosystem. Xage Security raised $20M in additional funding just two months after receiving a $17M contract from the U.S. Space Force. I’m no astronaut, but it sounds like zero trust cybersecurity and data protection are literally going to the moon. 🧑🏻🚀
Black Friday deal-making aside, we’ve seen a number of impressive product releases heading into year-end. Yuga Labs and Magic Eden are launching an NFT marketplace with a firm commitment to honor creator royalties on all NFT sales 💰(cue the Bankless spotlight 🎬). In gaming, Horizon launched its Sequence Builder, the only full-stack no-code dashboard for building web3 games 🎮 and experiences. HSBC launched custody services for tokenized securities. A16z startup Alongside launched its ‘V2’ entirely on-chain crypto index — think Jack Bogle, but on the blockchain. 😅 We’ve even had a few reorgs and spinouts to keep us on our toes (looking at you Avara & Wormhole fka Aave & Jump).
As we prepare for cozy winter weather ❄️and firelit nights to commence, we’d like to make a few suggestions for your holiday reading list. First up, Byron Wein’s 20 Rules of Investing & Life. Pay special attention to Rule #1: Network Intensely (AKA talk to us!) and Rule #17: There is a perfect job out there for everyone (AKA keep talking to us!). Thanks for keeping us in business, By. 😉Second, The Fund by Rob Copeland. In the words of the New York Times, “This is a terrific dagger of a book packed with cringey detail, just long enough to efficiently disembowel its subject.” *Downloads to Kindle immediately* Consider this your adult, Jim Carrey-less equivalent of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” but with more ego, more money and not nearly enough rhyming. 💚
☕Cheersing with a mug shot & a good book,
The Intersection Crew
We’re Backing
We enjoyed chatting earlier this month with our pal Mike Coscetta at Paxos. Dividing his time between New York and Miami, Mike is one of the most dynamic and engaging folks in crypto. He was Head of Sales at Square (aka Block) during a period of massive growth and then served as Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at mega-broker Compass, both pre- and post-IPO. He joined Paxos in 2021 as Chief Revenue Officer, where he oversees a global team across sales, BD, customer success, operations, support and solutions.
You have a fascinating and darn impressive career, running sales and revenues for mega-successful public companies, one in payments and the other in real estate tech. What made you take the plunge into the wild-and-wooly world of crypto? Did your friends think you were insane?
I evaluated my next opportunity in the following order: first, where is a major sectoral shift happening? Blockchain is one of those shifts. Second, where should you play in that sectoral shift? I’d rather be in the picks + shovels layer, i.e. infrastructure vs chasing the next new token, the new hot protocol or, god forbid, the new NFT. Finally, what company is best positioned to win in that space? This is where I think Paxos’ approach to regulation is a winning strategy, and also where their multi-asset focus offers the biggest opportunity.
You’ve worked for a number of wildly successful, iconoclastic founders who have always placed a strong emphasis on culture. What have you noticed to be the commonalities between Square under Jack Dorsey and Paxos under Chad Cascarilla?
Jack and Chad both have a deep passion for their businesses, for the problems they’re trying to solve, and for their pursuit of excellence. Jack comes from the perspective of product and design, and Chad comes from a financial markets and risk perspective. They both believe the world can be a better place, and both companies have very strong cultures. The culture I remember at Square (now Block) was one of transparency, collaboration, and customer obsession; given the world we play in, the culture at Paxos is more about precision, excellence, and best-in-class risk management. Both companies have strong mission-driven focuses, and that focus on purpose comes directly from the founders who care about their companies as parents care about their kids.
We remember you sharing that you grew up with relatively modest means and sold Cutco knives door-to-door to help put yourself through Harvard undergrad. What drove you to crank so hard then and now?
It wasn’t quite door-to-door, but it was definitely a grind, and it was an incredible opportunity to make money around my brutal college schedule. Unlike many other students at Harvard, I needed to make money on the side, and I made more than I could have ever imagined. That job taught me an immense amount about selling, about entrepreneurship, about goal setting, and about overcoming obstacles. Those lessons helped me when I started my own business right out of college, and they have definitely come back as reminders in many instances as an executive.
Square mainly markets to SMBs and Compass has a focus on retail. Has it been a ramp now selling hardcore back-end infrastructure solutions to enterprise customers, including highly regulated financial institutions?
My sales background was largely in enterprise technology before going to Square, so this feels like a return to my sales roots. I’ve been lucky to see multiple industry transitions over the last 20 years (the move to the cloud, the growth of mobile, the advent of AI/big data, and now the transition to blockchain), but this feels like it could be the biggest transition of all since the market is so large. Many things remain the same about enterprise sales though: relationships matter; time kills all deals; customers/partners crave certainty and want your guidance as an expert; help customers add value to their customers.
Congrats on the PayPal / PYUSD deal — we view the partnership as a huge win for the industry, given PayPal’s reputation and reach. We also don’t think the street recognizes what a game-changer PYUSD could be for PayPal. Can you give us some history of the deal and what you’re most excited about?
I can’t speak for PayPal of course, but we are very excited about this next step in our long partnership with PayPal. This is the first time a stablecoin has been issued by a non-crypto-native company in the US, so you’re now starting to see the innovation curve shift from novel use cases to existing, established workflows. This is symbolic as a great use case for blockchain technology, with a robust and respected ecosystem (400m+ users, tens of millions of merchants), but it’s also a big step toward bringing the benefits of regulated blockchain technology to the mass market. Given PayPal’s brand and Paxos’ reputation in regulated stablecoins, we see a giant opportunity for this product, and all early indicators confirm that sentiment.
Paxos and Chad are OGs in the space and have worked hard to engage proactively with regulators — we remember Paxos was early with the BitLicense in 2018. What’s your sense of timing for stablecoin legislation? How important will this be?
I believe we will see more clear regulations for stablecoins, hopefully even in the US with the bill that recently came out of the House Financial Services Committee. Goes without saying, but further regulation will be a win for Paxos and other players in the space who have already chosen to be regulated. We have seen other countries and markets move aggressively toward providing a clear path to regulation, so unfortunately the US is lagging here. In Singapore for example, they recently finalized stablecoin regulation, and we were given the first in-principal approval for a Singapore-issued USD stablecoin by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
What does the stablecoin landscape look like in five years?
We’ve only just begun. There are trillions in USD around the world, and we’ve only tokenized about $100B — not to mention the other currencies that have yet to be tokenized. Tokenizing dollars is a great place to start because people know how to use dollars, and they know what the inefficiencies are. Being able to move money globally, instantly, transparently, and compliantly — for very little cost — is a major step forward from the archaic payment rails the US operates on today. It’s important for trust and stability that all of these stablecoins are backed 1:1 by cash or cash equivalents and that there’s a prudential regulator overseeing the issuance — without those, stablecoins may never truly reach escape velocity or bring in the most highly regulated partners and use cases. We also will likely see more white-label stablecoins for some big, global brands, and it’s also likely we see some real public-private partnerships for CBDCs like we are seeing in Brazil with the DREX pilot. So much more to come…
We’re Tracking
Argo Blockchain: Tom Chippas joined as CEO and Director. Tom was previously CEO of CBOE Digital. Link
Backpack: Can Sun, Armani Ferrante and Claire Zhang launched Backpack, a crypto exchange. Can was previously General Counsel at FTX, Armani was previously a Software Engineer at Alameda Research and Claire was previously a member of the legal team at FTX. Link
Binance: Richard Teng was promoted from Head of Regional Markets to CEO. Link
Blockaid: Jason Karsh joined as Head of Marketing and GTM. Jason was previously Chief Marketing Officer at Blockchain.com. Link
Catena Labs: João Fiadeiro joined as Chief Product Officer. João was previously Product Lead at Jump Crypto. Link
Circle: Christine Parker joined as Deputy General Counsel for Products and Regulatory Affairs. Christine was previously the VP and Deputy General Counsel for Regulatory Legal at Coinbase. As ever, we enjoyed partnering with the Circle team on this search. Daniel Kaleba was promoted from Assistant General Counsel to Deputy General Counsel for Litigation, IP and Employment. Link and Link
Hivemind: Stanley Huo joined as Partner and Head of Asia. Stanley was previously a Managing Director at China Renaissance. Link
Hoseki: Xander Carpousis joined as Chief Revenue Officer. Xander was previously Head of Strategy and Partnerships at Strike. Link
Kraken: Bivu Das joined as UK Managing Director. Bivu was previously the Co-Founder and CEO of Unblock. Link
Magic Eden: Nicholas Santomauro joined as Head of Marketing. Nicholas was previously Director of User Growth at Binance. We’re grateful for our partnership with Zhuoxun Yin and the rest of the Magic Eden team on this assignment. Link
Moonpay: Mike Lempres joined the Board of Directors for MoonPay USA. Mike was previously Chief Legal & Risk Officer and Chief Policy Officer at Coinbase. Link
Optimism: Ryan Wyatt joined as Chief Growth Officer. Ryan was previously President of Polygon Labs. Link
Ritual: Niraj Pant and Akilesh Potti launched Ritual, an AI coprocessor for blockchains. Niraj and Akilesh were previously Partners at Polychain Capital. Link
Telos: Justin Edwards joined as Head of Gaming. Edwards was previously Chief Operating Officer of Decentraland. Link
VersiFi: Martin Garcia joined as Co-CEO. Martin was previously a Managing Director and Co-Head of Trading and Lending at Genesis. Link
Intersection Growth Partners is the leading executive search firm in crypto and frontier fintech. We connect our clients with game-changing talent and invest our own capital for true alignment.
Monthly Mint — 11.2023
