NEW YORK (Reuters) – The former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Commission Arthur Levitt and former president of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp Sheila Bair have joined the board of directors of the trading platform of Omniex cryptocurrency.
PHOTO FILE: Arthur Levitt, former president of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States, attends the Reuters Global Wealth Management summit in New York on June 5, 2013. REUTERS / Adrees Latif
Omniex also said he had hired Maartje Bus, former head of the financial markets of Thomson Reuters Corp ( TRI.TO ), as director of strategic partnerships, and Tom Eidt, former head of regulatory affairs at KCG, as chief compliance officer and general board .
Other former guard dogs and financial services executives have joined the ranks of cryptocurrencies, as the nascent sector seems to mature and face greater regulatory control.
"We are at the dawn of a revolutionary and global asset class, but we are also at the center of regulatory thinking on how to deal with and regulate cryptographic resources," Bair said in a statement.
Bair served as president of the US banking regulator from 2006 to 2011 and played an important role in the government's response to the 2008 financial crisis.
Omniex, who has offices in San Francisco and Santa Monica, California, is the development of technologies and services to facilitate the trade of cryptocurrencies like bitcoins to financial institutions.
While interest in cryptocurrencies has grown, the sector still lacks the same market infrastructure available to investors in other asset classes.
"Institutional investors need specific technology to solve the challenges they face today and equip them to handle the hidden obstacles they will encounter tomorrow in this new asset class," Levitt said in a statement.
Levitt, who became the longest-serving president of the SEC after covering the role from 1993 to 2001, is currently a consultant for several financial technology companies including Social Finance Inc., BitPay payment company and Blockchain swap provider.
Omniex has raised $ 10 million in seed funding over the past 10 months from companies such as Jump Capital, Digital Currency Group and Wicklow Capital, as well as Alan Howard, founder of the Brevan Howard hedge fund.
Report by Anna Irrera; Editing by Phil Berlowitz
