In brief
- Binance hired Rohit Wad, a 30 year veteran of Silicon Valley firms like Microsoft and Google
- The move comes as Binance pushes to win the trust of regulators and mainstream finance
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Binance announced on Friday it has hired Rohit Wad, who has spent more than 30 years at Microsoft and other Silicon Valley giants, to be its new Chief Technology Officer.
The move comes at a time that Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, is working to shake off its one-time renegade image and to extend crypto's role in the mainstream economy. Hiring Wad appears to be a key part of that plan.
"Wad will be responsible for engineering scalable, compliant and fast Web3 services and solutions," said Binance in a release announcing the news. "He will guide the team to build products that will bring mass adoption to crypto and lower the barrier to entry to Web3 technology."
Wad began his career at Microsoft in the early 1990s, helping to build out core software products like Excel and Bing. After stints at Google and Facebook, he returned to Microsoft in 2016 to take on the role of Corporate VP of Product and Engineering.
On Friday, Binance also announced it poached Mayur Kamat, a senior executive at Singapore-based travel giant Agoda, to be its new VP of product.
All of this comes a month after Binance's CEO, Changpeng Zhao (known universally as CZ), announced the company intended to make a spree of acquisitions targeting companies in non-cryptomarkets.
"We want to identify and invest in one or two targets in every economic sector and try to bring them into crypto," said CZ at the time.
Binance appears flush with cash and CZ's personal fortune is reportedly close to $100 billion, putting the company in position to increase its already large footprint in crypto and beyond.
But Binance has also been dogged by regulatory problems as agencies in the U.S. and around the world conduct investigations into allegations of illicit trading on the exchange and scrutinize its anti-money laundering practices.
In the last year, the company has moved aggressively to shore up its reputation by hiring executives from the IRS, Interpol and the political world to demonstrate that it is taking regulation and compliance issues seriously.