Recap of AllianceBlock’s New C-Level Executives Plus Other AMA Takeaways
AllianceBlock has been working hard to build a bridge between traditional finance and all the opportunities that are presented in the decentralized finance sector of the blockchain industry, also known as DeFi. We believe DeFi is the new traditional finance and hope to bring the same level of rigor and security that exists in this world into the new and burgeoning space.
In realizing this mission, gathering the best talent from all fields is clearly key. AllianceBlock is already led by a team of ex-JP Morgan, Barclays, BNP Paribas, and Goldman Sachs bankers and quants. We also count on a strong network of peers coming from three of the most prestigious incubators in Europe: Station F, L39, and Kickstart Innovation. During the past eight months we have only doubled down on this approach as we ve built an extensive product suite with a sizable team of some of the most experienced developers in the scene.
Last month, we were happy to introduce new additions to our team that consist of C-Level executives who will be joining AllianceBlock. These seasoned leaders and top university Ph.D.’s will be an essential part in assuring that we have the right processes and foundations to grow, generate revenue, and have more use cases that bring DeFi possibilities to traditional finance. We also answered some key community questions about plans business development, building partnerships through our chain-agnostic tech and much more.
C-Level Profiles
Houman Falakshah, Chief Research Officer
As a Ph.D. in quantum mechanics, Houman was first a researcher at the French Atomic Center in Paris before he moved into finance. There, he applied his skills to doing research on mathematical finance and applied mathematics, going on to become a quant for institutions such as Lloyd’s Bank and Barclays Bank in London. His experience is vast in model development, risk management tools, derivatives, options, foreign exchange, and commodities.
Houman became a private participant in crypto in 2016 and has been fascinated by the potential of DeFi ever since.
“I truly believe in DeFi and think AllianceBlock is a perfect place with amazing people for me to contribute to the space. I look forward to achieving great things with the team and community behind AllianceBlock.”
Matthieu Mariapragassam, Head of Quantitative Analytics
After starting his career in 2010 as a quantitative analyst in equity and commodity derivatives, Matthieu moved on from Murex to Academia. He completed a Ph.D. at Oxford in applied mathematics, specifically in mathematical finance, stochastic analysis, and numerical methods. Then he went on to work as an FX Quantitative Analyst at Barclays Capital where he developed new models and helped exotic product offerings.
He will now be joining the team at AllianceBlock to overview the mathematical and scientific aspect of the product base and associated deliverables.
“I decided to join AllianceBlock for the amazing opportunity that it brings, meaning being able to develop new approaches in a very innovative field such as decentralized finance. All of this with a fantastic team of very skilled and highly motivated people.”
Anders Christensen, Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Ecosystem
Anders brings over 20 years of experience in innovative product development and new service launches in banks such as Barclays and BBVA. He has also worked with successful startup teams and co-founded the Swiss fintech award.
Besides his role as CMO, Andes will be the Head of Ecosystem where he will bring special emphasis on incubation and venture capital after his experiences at Avaloq. There, he connected over 160 Avaloq banks from around the world to 150 fintech solutions, seeing blockchain as a megatrend.
“We saw more and more of the mainstream banks being pushed by their clients with their increasing exposures to crypto to slowly but surely adopt different blockchain solutions. So, the trend is clear, and it’s also one of the reasons why I joined AllianceBlock.”
Michael Borowiec, Head of Crypto Marketing
Having led the entire communications of blockchain application platform Lisk, Michael comes with vast experience in communications and marketing for emerging technologies. His team scaled its online presence to over a hundred thousand followers on Twitter, funnelling thousands into inner community channels. After this, he went on to provide consultancy services to industry-leading blockchain companies such as Trezor and other emerging technology players in renewable energy.
Michael will be helping AllianceBlock scale its educational content around our tech, vision and business, as well as leveraging our partnerships.
“I’m very excited about joining this company. From what I’ve seen so far, we have the potential to go very far and everybody joining today just confirms that.”
Christen Oesterbye, Chief Operating Officer
Christen worked for IBM where he became a finance director for one of its main software businesses. He then went on to be CFO in Europe for a Silicon Valley startup and has been involved in more than 20 different companies as advisor, board member, and other executive roles.
Starting at AllianceBlock as an advisor, Christen will now be moving into a COO role to help it scale and grow. He is currently based in our Zug office.
“What I’m intending to do, and I think my mission is crystal clear, is to deliver operational excellence and make AllianceBlock and the community win.”
Ed Newey, Chief HR Officer
Also based in Zug, Ed will bring over 15 years of experience in human resources. He has worked with early foundations in organization development, leadership development, and consulting with Deloitte Human Capital as well as HR leadership in blockchain startups. These experiences have made him comfortable in the high-paced environment of workplaces such as that of AllianceBlock.
“AllianceBlock’s vision is grand. The intention to disrupt the foundations of the financial services is hugely ambitious and it was very appealing to me. It’s absolutely doable, but it will require a world-leading, world-class blend of skills and experiences in the management team.”
Gerben van den Bergh, Chief Innovation Officer
Based in our Utrecht office in the Netherlands, Gerben has also led projects in Brussels, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Prague, and the UK. He brings over 20 years of experience in roles that include project management and senior consulting where he implemented emerging technologies at traditional institutions. He recently worked at Cognizant where he delivered conversational AI practice to customers.
“Within AllianceBlock I will be working on possible ways to apply our technologies and services into traditional financial processes, but also ensuring that our products keep adding value not only to traditional financial institutions but also to DeFi. Currently I’m investigating opportunities to implement the data tunnel in traditional oriented processes like supply chain and marketing.”
Q & A Takeaways
During the AMA, we also answered some questions about what we have been building at AllianceBlock. We touched on everything from expansion to other continents to our new fundraising application. Here are some key takeaways.
New Executives are Leading Expansion
Some of the questions continued with our C-Level executives and how they’re already contributing to advanced discussions with partners in traditional finance. We are speaking with banks in Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia. Most of which have already shown interest in our solutions.
Partnerships, Bridges, and Interoperability
On the other hand, the team has been collaborating with our partners at Hedera, especially on integrations for our Bridge which will go live soon. We want to be blockchain-agnostic, so we look forward to having most of our products on it and link to other major ecosystems such as Polkadot.
Part of our strategy is being compatible with all these different networks. There are many amazing companies that are building our product and not all of them are based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Some run on Solana, Cardano, Arbitrium, or Cosmos. That’s why we have also been resolving issues and bugs on Ink as part of our involvement with their smart contracts.
Better DeFi Services
With regards to DeFi, we are happy to announce that ALBT single-sided staking is live on BSC (Binance Smart Chain) through our Liquidity Mining as a Service (LMaaS) solution: allianceblock.defiterm.io/staking
We expect to see more users taking advantage of our liquidity mining as a service programs. Ultimately, these will have higher rewards for the community. We’re also redesigning our user interface so that users who are using our services for liquidity mining have an easier time.
Updates on Fundrs and Roadmap
Finally, we want to inform everyone that our long-awaited Fundrs fundraising application is already in the audit phase. It will be fully decentralized and governed by a DAO where anyone from our community will be able to become a delegator. After this, we are doing a complete update on the roadmap in terms of products, technical milestones, and the ecosystem.
All in all, there are exciting things coming up for AllianceBlock and our community. Stay tuned for future AMAs on our YouTube channel!
About AllianceBlock
AllianceBlock is bridging the gap between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi), by remedying issues that exist in both spheres and linking them more closely together. They see the future of finance as an integrated system in which the best of both worlds can work together to increase capital flows and technological innovation.
Building this future by bridging traditional finance with compliant, data-driven access to new decentralized markets, DeFi projects and ecosystem-scaling tools such as funding and interoperability. As such, they are building a next-generation financial infrastructure that aims to provide regulated financial entities around the world with the tools they need to seamlessly access the DeFi space.
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