TriliTech, a firm backed by the Tezo Foundation to enhance adoption of blockchain, has hired a former trader from Bank of America to lead its DeFi initiatives.
Tezos is 29th by total value locked, a metric that tracks how much crypto is locked up in deFi protocol's smart contracts, according to DeFiLlama data.
In September, Nicolas Streschinsky, who is chief executive of DeFi, joined TriliTech. Most recently, Streschinsky served as the director of Maven Securities, a private trading firm.
Streschinsky has worked as a trader at various Wall Street firms such as Bank of America, UBS, and Credit Suisse.
The hire is part of TriliTech'sbroader effort to attract DeFi applications to Tezos, the firm said.
TriliTech's objective is to support outside projects on the chain through grants and investments, including funding from the Tezos Foundation Mike Mendes, another recent hire who joined the Defi partnership team in January, said DL News.
In the first half of 2023, just over $18 million in grants were issued, and the Tezo Foundation has a treasury worth $520 million, including a mix of cash, Bitcoin, Tezos and other assets.
The firm's new hires are part of the trend in crypto markets, where layoffs have become the norm. Since April 2022, there have been an estimated 30,000 layoffs of crypto workers, including pacesetters like Crypto.com and Kraken.
Some traditional finance alumni, such as Galaxy Digital's Goldman Sachs alum Danielle Johnson, have opted to leave crypto, such as Galaxy Digital's goldman Sachs alum Danielle Johnson who left her role in May, after just a year in crypto.
The crypto exodus is not a threat to Streschinsky.
He first traded crypto during his time at Brevan Howard's hedge fund, Alan Howard, where he began interest in Ethereum and was obsessed with the potential for blockchain to revolutionize finance.
Decentralised finance can change this, and it's not just for the regular investor - high-net-worth investors are also interested in it, Streschinsky said.
Streschinsky and Mendes share the desire to attract more decentralised exchanges to Tezo's blockchain.
Streschinsky said he also worked on a derivatives exchange.
Streschinsky, 60, told DL News that he was working for the United States of America's news agency. Binance's larger market share may explain Binance's more speculative ways to play the market, he said, adding that Coinbase offering users less speculative plays may explain Binance's larger market share.
With that in mind, giving users the option to trade derivatives is also important, particularly in providing things such as perpetual futures, or perps, as they are more commonly known.
Perps are a type of fixed futures contract with no expiration date that traders can use to continuously place leveraged bets on price movements.
While perps pre-date crypto, they have come to notoriety in the past decade due to crypto trader's affinity with them - especially due to the leverage opportunities available through perps.
By May 2021, the XBTUSD perpetual trading was the most traded crypto derivatives product of all time, with more than $3 trillion in total volume on BitMex alone.
Incentivising people to put leverage trades increases trading and volatility, which is better for everyone, Streschinsky said.
DL News' London-based Markets Correspondent, Adam Morgan McCarthy, is the chief executive of DL News.