Ex-Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan traders hire hundreds of crypto

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Rich Rosenblum was ahead of the game. In 2013, when Bitcoin was worth just over $ 100 and people were more involved in issues like the shutdown of the US government, Rosenblum formed GSR, a digital asset trading company. He had spent nine years at Goldman Sachs and was managing director of Goldman in oil trading. Nine years later, GSR is one of the world’s leading crypto market building companies. It is also hiring, a lot.

“Our plan is to hire 100 people every six months for the next several years,” says Michael Bressler, GSR Global Sales Director. “We are definitely recruiting at all levels. The demand for our services is high, and we can’t see it stopping – on the contrary, it will continue to grow.”

Bressler himself joined GSR in June 2021. Previously, he had spent nearly 14 years at JPMorgan, where he was general manager of global commodities and responsible for sales and marketing for the West region, based in San Francisco. Prior to JPM, Bressler worked with Rosenblum at Goldman Sachs. He points out that GSR has an assortment of other Goldman and JPM alumni on its team, including Benoit Bosc, the former Goldman oil trader who joined in May as US sales manager and global manager. structuring, and Claire Lim, who in September joined a derivatives trading position at JPMorgan in Singapore.

“A number of us have worked together at Goldman Sachs before,” Bressler explains. “We’ve learned a culture of being very customer-centric and always thinking long term and doing the right thing for customers. This philosophy is a fundamental principle of the company. There are a lot of people in crypto who don’t put the customer first, but we always will. ”

GSR may have started as a crypto market maker, but it is branching out. “Our core business was and still is market making, but we are branching out,” says Bressler. “This year, we’ve invested over $ 60 million through our venture capital arm, and about two-thirds of that has gone to DeFi. We are also expanding into asset management. You will see GSR offering funds.

As with any electronic market making, market making for crypto tokens is a technology intensive business. “This market building process uses complex code and is something we have developed in a proprietary fashion. Basically, we are a very advanced and sophisticated, customer-oriented trading technology company, ”says Bressler.

This means that GSR is pursuing precisely the developer and algorithmic trading talent sought after by other market makers, and that banks like JPMorgan are fighting hard for control. But Bressler says GSR doesn’t just hire from banks. “The one thing that matters most when we hire is a passion for crypto,” he says. “Even if you’ve never worked in a crypto company, if all you think about all day is crypto, you will be a good fit. For us. Your passion and interest in crypto matters more than that. what does your CV say.

Does that mean GSR will hire the kind of crypto-native teens and Axie Infinity enthusiasts that some rival market makers say they are open to recruiting? “Hiring teenagers can be overkill because most of our clients are not teenagers,” Bressler explains. “But we process and hire a lot of people in their twenties. Crypto is all about meritocracy – it’s much less ageist than traditional finance. You don’t see a lot of 24-year-old doctors in a bank, but you see a lot of people in their twenties leading interesting protocols or projects in the crypto space.

The difference between crypto and traditional banking (“Trad Fi”) is that even a little crypto experience can be very valuable, Bressler says. “It’s hard to find talent in crypto,” he says. “No one has 10 years of experience in cryptography. At this point, if you have a year of crypto experience, you will have more experience than half the market.

Coming from a TradFi career himself, Bressler says working in crypto is very different. “The suit and tie culture is less rigid – we’re a great fun place where people are encouraged to express their passions. The people at GSR are friends, says Bressler: “We do a lot of fun things and there’s a lot of energy and optimism.” Because crypto is a rapidly changing space, 2022 will likely be very different from 2021: market making in NFT could be the next on the horizon.

GSR is also different from traditional finance in other ways. – Staff receive two bonuses per year, one in the middle and one at the end. “It motivates people a lot,” adds Bressler. “Although, because a month in crypto is like a year in traditional finance, it can still seem like a long time.”

Considering how far GSR has come in the past 12 months, it started 2021 with 60 people and ends the year with almost the 200 people Rosenblum predicted in July it would reach. If you want to be one of the hundreds of people GSR is hiring in 2022, you’ll need to learn a lot about crypto, but Bressler says it’s immediately possible wherever you are. “The learning curve for crypto is vertical, but it makes the business exciting and exhilarating. I spent 22 years in mainstream finance and started to really learn crypto on Twitter. – People call it ‘Twitter crypto’ – it’s about refining hashtags and following accounts that you find useful. Crypto is a place where you can learn on your own. It’s all there if you have an internet connection.

Contact: [email protected] first. Whatsapp / Signal / Telegram also available (Telegram: @SarahButcher)

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