Former JPMorgan Executive Blythe Masters has agreed to become the new chief executive officer at Digital Asset Holdings (DAH).
DAH plans to build software for financial institutions to trade digital currencies. It was founded by Don Wilson, CEO of proprietary trading firm DRW Trading, and Sunil Hirani, the CEO of trueEX LLC, an exchange for interest rate Swaps .
Masters' career with JPMorgan spanned 27 years. She is known to be one of the pioneers behind credit default swaps, derivative instruments designed to hedge against bad loans. If used improperly however, the instruments can become highly risky assets, their destructive force becoming apparent during the 2008 financial crisis.
She became the chief financial officer of JPMorgan's investment bank in 2004, and became head of Global Commodities in 2007. She left the bank last year, around the same time the bank sold off its commodities business.
The new firm's software aims to provide a secure trading and settlement environment to trade digital currencies and protect against counterparty failures that have plagued multiple exchanges to date. In addition, it plans to build tools to convert traditional securities and currencies into digital form, allowing them to be traded more efficiently.
Notably, her ex-husband Daniel Masters is the head of Global Advisors, a commodities-focused hedge fund that launched a Bitcoin fund last year. He is also a former trader at JPMorgan.
Also last year, former JPMorgan Executive Paul Camp became Circle's CFO.
