Ex-Goldman, BlackRock Veteran Joins Crypto Trading Platform Apifiny as CTO

Crypto trading platform Apifiny has hired a Goldman Sachs and BlackRock veteran to lead its technology division, the company announced Thursday.

Jason Jiang will serve as the firm’s chief technology officer as it plans to go public by the end of 2021 with its trading, market-making and crypto mining operations. Prior to joining Apifiny, Jiang helped build high-speeding trading systems for the past 16 years.

During bitcoin's latest bull run, hiring from the world of traditional finance has ramped up as crypto’s market cap has soared. Earlier this month, institutional bitcoin shop NYDIG poached the chief financial officer of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund.

“Not only does [Jiang] have a lot of experience at Goldman, but he was also in BlackRock in the very early days, so he helped build BlackRock,” Apifiny CEO Haohan Xu said.

Read more: Crypto Trading Platform Apifiny Plans to Go Public

Jiang most recently served as a vice president at Goldman Sachs and led technical development efforts in the bank’s global narkets division, overseeing the quantitative trading, electronic market development and algorithm research groups. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Jiang was a vice president and software development manager at BlackRock.

Jiang said he was interested in Apifiny’s goal of being an exchange for other crypto exchanges.

“Currently, crypto is highly fragmented,” Jiang said. “We want to provide one single platform.”