Dive Brief:
- Dan Chen, formerly the vice president of capital markets and bank partnerships for buy now, pay later company Affirm, has joined cryptocurrency exchange Gemini Trust as its CFO, he announced Tuesday in social posts on LinkedIn and X.
- The appointment comes as the New York City-based Gemini, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, confidentially filed for an initial public offering, working with Citi and Goldman Sachs, according to a Bloomberg report that cited people familiar with the matter.
- “Crypto is the most dynamic sector in finance and Gemini is at the forefront of this revolution — making it simple and secure to engage on the digital asset frontier,” Chen wrote on his social media. “I’m looking forward to helping Gemini scale by driving financial strategy as the company enters its next phase of growth.”
Dive Insight:
The appointment closes a search for an experienced financial lead by the cryptocurrency exchange, and could signal momentum in Gemini’s reported bid to go public.
In a job listing for the CFO role posted on cryptojobs.com eight months ago, Gemini noted the incoming finance chief’s “immediate focus will be on identifying operational efficiencies across the finance org, streamlining and unifying financial processes and workstreams, and bringing more structure and scalability to ensure that we are poised for future growth.”
According to the job posting, the position offers a base salary range between $318,000 to $397,000 in New York, California and Washington, a discretionary annual bonus and a new hire equity grant, among other compensation.
Chen spent three years in his role at the San Francisco-based Affirm, which went public in 2021 with an IPO that valued the BNPL provider at $24 billion, according to a Forbes report at the time. Starting his career at Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, he served as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley before becoming a consultant. Chen returned to Morgan Stanley in 2006 as a vice president, according to his LinkedIn profile. He jumped to MetLife, then served as treasurer for Cross River Bank for two years before ascending to the CFO role at Blue Foundry Bank, then small-business banking platform Nearside, which was acquired by Plastiq.
The Affirm alum is also taking Gemini’s financial reins as the exchange closes the books on several regulatory actions which emerged in the wake of the 2022 collapse of fellow crypto exchange FTX — and as the wider cryptocurrency industry eyes growing opportunities that could arise from the Trump administration’s efforts to foster a friendlier relationship with crypto-related businesses.
Gemini agreed to pay a $5 million civil penalty in January to settle allegations from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it made false statements in connection with a derivatives product certification.
The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 charged both Gemini and Genesis Global Capital with selling unregistered securities through the Gemini Earn cryptocurrency lending platform. Genesis agreed last March to pay a $21 million penalty to settle the charges.
Last month, however, the SEC told Gemini’s legal counsel that it had dropped its investigation and would not be pursuing an enforcement action against the company, Cameron Winklevoss wrote in a post on X.
“The SEC cost us tens of millions of dollars in legal bills alone and hundreds of millions in lost productivity, creativity, and innovation,” Winklevoss wrote. “Of course Gemini is not alone. The SEC’s behavior in aggregate towards other crypto companies and projects cost orders of magnitude more and caused unquantifiable loss in economic growth for America.”
The closed investigation is one among several targeting crypto firms that the SEC has dropped in the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term. The SEC also recently ended investigations into Robinhood’s crypto unit, Coinbase and Kraken.
Gemini did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
