The Woman Who Could Help Build A Blockchain Winner

27 years on Wall Street to Bitcoin. An increasingly common evolution for former Wall Street executives. Blythe Masters was one of the most publicized to leave Wall Street to explore digital currency and blockchain technology. If her history at JP Morgan is any sign, she might be exactly the right person to fight in favor of blockchain technology.

In a recent blog post at Ounce.me called, “Blythe, Master Of The Financial-Verse ,” the history of Blythe Masters is detailed.

As she built JP Morgan’s commodities arm, she once said her division’s competitors are “scared shitless of us” and said “we are going to build and finish building the No. 1 commodities-trading franchise on the planet.”

Though her plan did not go perfectly, her dedication and positive-thinking are exactly the sort of attitude that creates winners, and the same will hold true in the blockchain space.

An opinionated woman while on Wall Street, Masters once told Larry Summers – who has also become a bitcoiner – that she opposed the financial overhauls by the Obama administration.

“She said things everyone else in the room felt but they weren’t willing to say,” Tim Ryan, chief executive of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association,” described.

As US senators accused JP Morgan in 2008 of manipulating oil prices, she snapped back: “Are you calling me a liar?”

“She is definitely not a shrinking violet,” Bart Chilton of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.

Critics of Masters call her “the woman who built financial weapons of mass destruction,” a claim she denies. During her time at JP Morgan, her superiors defended her: “You are one stough kid,” one executive wrote.  

“I think he meant I was one ‘tough’ kid,” she told employees. “I will be checking that with him.”vWhy is Ms. Masters in digital currency now?

She wishes “to build a bridge between the emerging digital-currency industry and Wall Street,” adding that, “If you can find a way to bridge the two of them then you have something that is truly revolutionary.”

For her, Bitcoin is “the financial challenge of our time.”

Of course, the team which supports her is a tour de force, featuring individuals who prior worked with companies such as, SWIFT, Goldman Sachs, WeightWatchers, and the DTCC.

Digital Asset Holdings is very close to the Linux and IBM joint blockchain project. Of that project, Blythe Masters stated: “We are delighted that The Linux Foundation is providing a broadly-supported vehicle through which we can contribute the Hyperledger brand and enterprise grade blockchain solutions to the open source community,” said Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset. “The resulting impetus will benefit our clients and the entire global financial services industry who are seeking to build business applications on a trusted foundation.”

By working alongside the biggest names in blockchain, and having deep connections in the Wall Street industry’s she is looking to revolutionize, Blythe Masters could prove to be the woman the blockchain needs to go mainstream.

Images from Shutterstock and LinkedIn.