Crypto Platform Matrixport Hires Coinbase Exec To Construct US Enterprise

Matrixport has landed a prized former Coinbase government to guide the cryptocurrency funding platform’s US enterprise, in line with two sources aware of the matter. 

Anthony DeMartino, a Wall Road veteran, was most just lately head of threat methods, institutional decentralized finance and derivatives buying and selling at Coinbase. The prolonged title, one supply who has carried out enterprise with the alternate stated, signifies DeMartino’s departure offers a “huge blow.”

Matrixport representatives confirmed the rent. A Coinbase spokesperson didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark. DeMartino declined to remark.

Cynthia Wu, Matrixport’s chief working officer, informed Blockworks that firm executives are satisfied DeMartino’s “expertise, ardour and magnificence suits Matrixport very effectively.”

Having beforehand frolicked at conventional finance establishments — together with managing director-level positions overseeing elements of emerging-market buying and selling for Barclays and HSBC — DeMartino is understood by trade members to maintain strict tabs on a deep rolodex of Wall Road contacts. 

That, sources stated, was particularly essential to Coinbase’s yearslong push to develop one thing just like a conventional prime brokerage — together with lending, buying and selling and clearing, in addition to capital introduction. Although exchanges and different crypto monetary companies have labored to develop such an all-in-one, plug-and-play product, most merchants say it’s nonetheless a pipe dream, resulting in a hodgepodge of various service suppliers primarily based in several time zones investing in several corners of crypto markets.

Coinbase just lately introduced steep layoffs in response to a market downturn that has eroded once-lucrative buying and selling charges. Though exchanges have tried for years to diversify their income streams to scale back reliance on such charges, outcomes have been combined. 

Matrixport, in the meantime, seems to nonetheless be on the hiring path — an outlier in a crypto panorama the place most layoffs are measured as higher or worse than anticipated, however anticipated, nonetheless.