Asiff Hirji, Coinbase’s former president and chief operating officer, is the new president of Figure Technologies , a blockchain-focused lending firm.

Figure, the lending firm backed by Morgan Creek Digital, announced that Hirji joined forces on Wednesday, saying that the long-term financial executive will oversee the growth of the company. The company would create a merchant bank with the help of Hirji, Figure CEO Mike Cagney said in a statement.

“Asiff has already been a critical advisor to me on how we manage the growth of Figure in order to drive the transformation of financial services across categories and around the world,” he said. “His deep experience in the financial services industry and his long history of helping companies drive and manage growth are both going to be important to the growth of Figure and the creation of our new merchant bank.”

Last month, Figure closed a $103 million Series C round, bringing its total funding to over $225 million and the valuation to $1.2 billion.

Before joining Coinbase, Hirji served as President and COO of TD Ameritrade, growing that business 6x into the nation’s largest online broker. Hirji has also held senior leadership roles with TPG Capital, Saxo Bank, HP, and Bain Capital and has served on a number of public and private boards including Citrix and Advent Software.

He said in a statement that he expects that blockchain would slash the financial services costs.

“Blockchain will crash the costs of financial services, making products more affordable and available to all. Figure is one of the very few companies actually turning that promise into reality,” said Hirji. “The opportunity now is to scale to more financial products and open this capability to all financial institutions. I feel fortunate to be able to help make the promise of blockchain a reality.”

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