Aave General Counsel Rebecca Rettig Joins Silvergate’s Board

Rebecca Rettig, general counsel for Aave Companies, the team behind decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave, has been appointed to the board of both Silvergate Bank and its publicly traded parent company, Silvergate Capital (SI).

• “Rebecca’s broad wealth of knowledge in the blockchain and digital currency space make her a valuable addition to our board,” said Silvergate President and CEO Alan Lane. “Her experience will support us as we continue to provide innovative solutions to the rapidly growing digital currency industry.”
• Speaking with CoinDesk, Rettig shared her interest in helping to serve as a possible bridge between DeFi and traditional finance. “I think there will be lots of opportunities for Silvergate as a partner and a collaborator, as we from the Web 3 side, and they from the banking side, continue to bring crypto to institutions and traditional financial actors,” she said.
• She said Aave Companies, based in London, is bringing institutional investors into the Web 3 sector through Aave Arc, a DeFi liquidity pool for financial institutions. Liquidity pools are crowdsourced pools of cryptocurrencies or tokens that allow users to trade crypto on DeFi platforms without a central intermediary.
• Silvergate provides financial infrastructure products and services to the digital asset industry, with subsidiary Silvergate Bank the main banking partner for most crypto companies, Rettig said.
• Prior to joining Aave last year, Rettig was a partner in the financial services group at the Los Angeles-based law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, representing blockchain and digital currency clients.

Read more: Fireblocks ‘Whitelists’ 30 Trading Firms for Aave’s Institutional DeFi Debut

CORRECTION (March 16, 19:23 UTC): Aave Companies is based in London, not Switzerland; the Aave protocol itself doesn’t have a location. Adds clarity throughout.