Facebook hired two Coinbase veterans to work in compliance this month. Having hired two veteran experts for its blockchain project from the well-known crypto startup Coinbase, Facebook makes a statement that the social network is about to be a worthy opponent for the upcoming crypto-related project; Telegram Open Network (TON) from Telegram.
According to Business Insider, Facebook has hired two veteran compliance experts (Mikheil Moucharrafie and Jeff Cartwright) from Coinbase. Moucharrafie was at Coinbase for almost four years, most recently as a Risk manager and before that as a Compliance manager, is now a compliance officer for blockchain at the social media giant. While’s Cartwright was the Director of Regulatory risk and exams at Coinbase, he left Coinbase in March after nearly five years at the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange in various compliance roles. He joined Facebook as a policy and compliance manager this month, according to his LinkedIn profile. The profile does not address how involved he will be in Facebook’s blockchain projects, which include a secretive plan to create a price-stable cryptocurrency.
A lawyer by training, Cartwright joined Coinbase in 2014 after working in compliance roles at American Express and Goldman Sachs and as an anti-money-laundering (AML) consultant at Big Four professional services firm KPMG.
He spent the first three years at Coinbase managing the startup’s AML and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance, was promoted to head of internal audit in March 2017, and then to director of regulatory risk and exams in December of last year.
Last week, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee wrote an open letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, asking him to share details about the cryptocurrency project, with a particular focus on consumer privacy. Little is known about the crypto initiative, called, Libra. The company began building up a blockchain research team last year, behind the curtain, headed up by Vice President and former Coinbase board member, David Marcus. The company has even posted numerous job listings for the team since, and notable figures in the space such as crypto economist Christian Catalini, a researcher with MIT, have also joined the project.
The company is reportedly looking to raise as much as $1 billion for the project to use as collateral to back a stablecoin.
