One of President Trump’s previous economic advisers has joined Spring Labs. Gary Cohn is the latest former Wall Streeter to take up a position within the ever-expanding blockchain industry.

Cohn Joins Steven Hunt and Christine Sandler in Moving to the Blockchain Industry

Yet another blockchain-related company has managed to poach talent from Wall Street.

Spring Labs is a startup that currently employs 20 members of staff and is hoping to disrupt the credit and identification sectors. The company’s latest hire is Gary Cohn. According to a report in the Financial Times, Cohn had the following to say about the “unique opportunity” presented by Spring Labs’s and the firm’s goals:

“[It’s] an obvious place to take a very, very analogue industry and digitise it.”

The chairman and CEO of Spring Labs, Adam Jiwan, also spoke about the firm’s hopes for the future. He stated that the blockchain-based platform would allow data to be shared between various parties. Blockchain technology would help facilitate this in a secure and anonymous fashion. Finally, he opined that Spring Labs might “ultimately… replace the credit bureaus you see today”.

Cohn once served as an economic adviser to President Trump. He was a crucial contributor to the tax reform package passed at the end of 2017.

However, he voluntarily left the position earlier this year owing to a disagreement over steel and aluminium tariffs. Before taking his position at the Whitehouse, the 58-year-old also served as president of Goldman Sachs.

Cohn’s interest in blockchain began whilst he was still working for Trump. He reportedly looked at a number of companies working in the space during his time at the White House.

However, his belief in blockchain technology should not be construed as an endorsement of cryptocurrencies in general. He clearly distanced himself from such a position to the Financial Times, before going on to state how blockchain technology can benefit various industries:

“We all know all the inefficiencies of the existing currency world and blockchain clearly helps to eliminate them at some point in the future.”

Cohn is the latest in a rapidly expanding list of former Wall Street names to join either cryptocurrency or blockchain firms. The likes of Steven Hunt, of Jump Trading, joined Kraken virtual currency exchange in May of this year. Meanwhile, Coinbase were able to poach Christine Sandler, the former head of sales for the New York Stock Exchange Euronext desk.

Other big names from the world of traditional finance and economics to join the blockchain revolution include a number of Nobel Prize winners. The list of laureates serving as advisers for ICOs and blockchain startups features the likes of Alvin Roth, Oliver Hart, and Eric Maskin.

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