The crypto-finance venture led by Bitmain Technologies’ billionaire founder Wu Jihan has made senior additions to its business development team in Asia and EMEA.
Matrixport has appointed Omid Zadeh and Justin Buitendam as directors of business development and sales, the startup announced on Thursday.
Based in Australia, Buitendam has over two decades of derivatives experience, and held senior trading and portfolio management roles at Macquarie Bank, Transmarket Group, RKR Capital and Refco. He will focus on business development in Asia.
Zadeh, based in London, will lead Matrixport's institutional client strategy and engagement in EMEA. He brings over 15 years of experience in electronic trading and multi-asset sales across FX, equities, fixed income and futures, and options derivatives, including at ICSP and London Stock Exchange.
Global Expansion
The appointments come on the heels of over $100 million in fresh capital raised from investors including DST Global and Tiger Global in a series C funding round, ramping up its pre-money valuation to $1 billion in two years since its inception.
Matrixport said it plans to further invest in research and development to enhance its innovative product offerings and security, as well as to continue its global expansion and to secure licenses to operate in more jurisdictions.
«Strengthening our international management bench strength is key as we deliver on our vision of being the one-stop digital assets platform of choice,» John Ge, co-founder and CEO, Matrixport, said.
Big Ambitions
Wu spun Matrixport off from Bitmain in 2019, after the world’s largest maker of Bitcoin mining rigs ran into a cash crunch. He resigned from Bitmain earlier this year.
The digital asset financial services platform provides one-stop crypto financial services, and has $10 billion in assets under management and custody, with over $5 billion in monthly trading volumes.
We said he aims to have hundreds of billions of dollars in assets under management and custody within five years, and aims to go public in three to five years to offer investors an exit.
