Blockchain Firm Once Run by Blythe Masters Names Yuval Rooz CEO

(Bloomberg) -- Yuval Rooz was promoted to chief executive officer of blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings after Wall Street veteran Blythe Masters resigned the post in December.

Rooz, one of the venture’s co-founders, has been finance chief and more recently was chief operating officer, the company said Tuesday in announcing his promotion. He will relieve the acting CEO, AG Gangadhar, who remains chairman.

Digital Asset is among a group of startups trying to apply blockchain, the distributed ledger technology underlying Bitcoin, to financial markets. Advocates say the system could streamline trade settlement and stock issuance. Despite early enthusiasm for the technology’s promise, some corporate champions of distributed ledger technology cooled off.

Masters was formerly a senior executive at JPMorgan Chase & Co., where she worked for more than two decades and helped develop credit-default swaps -- derivatives that played a hand in the 2008 financial crisis. After joining Digital Asset in 2015, she became a high-profile advocate of blockchain for finance and a mainstay on the speaking circuit. In December, the company said she was stepping down for personal reasons but would remain involved with the firm.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Leising in Los Angeles at mleising@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, David Scheer, Dan Reichl

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