The 2016 Tech 50: Blythe Masters

The Digital Asset Holdings CEO debuts on our annual Tech 50 ranking at No. 17.

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< The 2016 Tech 50

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17
Blythe Masters
Chief Executive Officer
Digital Asset Holdings
PNR

Blythe Masters may at first blush seem an unlikely evangelist for the distributed ledger technology known as blockchain. A 1991 graduate of the University of Cambridge with a BA in economics, the U.K. native held a variety of management roles across JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s global capital markets businesses, including credit derivatives, asset-backed securities and commodities. “I grew up deep in the inner workings of the financial services industry,” says Masters, 47, CEO of New York–based blockchain start-up Digital Asset Holdings. “I couldn’t do what I’m doing now if it hadn’t been for the almost 30 years I spent at JPMorgan.” Masters became friends with Digital Asset co-founder Sunil Hirani when JPMorgan invested in his credit default swap brokerage, Creditex Group, in the late ’90s. She joined Hirani and his co-founder, Don Wilson (of Chicago’s DRW Trading Group), on the Digital Asset board in December 2014 and became CEO in March 2015. “In blockchain I saw a technology that had the potential to mutualize infrastructure in a way that has not been practically possible to do before,” Masters explains. Noting that blockchain had been best known for powering the controversial cryptocurrency Bitcoin, she says: “People started to assume that the tenets of the Bitcoin movement — anonymity, open to everyone, no central administrator — were inviolate features of the technology. But it turns out that you can change the assumptions.” Digital Asset is building “encrypted, distributed, straight-through processing tools” that will allow financial services companies to reduce costs, increase capital efficiency and strengthen cybersecurity. The 70-person company, which has offices in Budapest, London, San Francisco, Sydney, Tel Aviv and Zurich, intends to generate revenue through software licenses and contracts. It currently is working with ASX — which in June invested $7 million to raise its stake in Digital Asset to 8.5 percent — to develop a distributed-ledger-based posttrade infrastructure for the Australian cash equities market, and with Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (see Michael Bodson, No. 14) on a new clearing and settlement system for U.S. Treasury repurchase agreements. “A lot of people say blockchain equals the avenue by which the natural intermediaries will be put out of business because you don’t need them anymore,” Masters says. “We have a very different view. We believe that blockchain will enable financial intermediaries to do a better job of providing the services they provide.”

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The 2016 Tech 50

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1. Catherine
Bessant
Bank of America Corp.

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2. Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange

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3. Lance Uggla
Markit

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4. Phupinder Gill
CME Group

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5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg

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6. R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group

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7. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock

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8. Adena Friedman
Nasdaq

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9. Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures

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10. Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings

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11. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments

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12. David Craig
Thomson Reuters

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13. Michael Spencer
ICAP

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14. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

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15. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

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16. Chris Concannon
BATS Global Markets

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17. Blythe Masters
Digital Asset Holdings

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18. David Rutter
R3CEV

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19. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw & Co.

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20. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets

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21. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings

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22. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings

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23. Robert Alexander
Capital One Financial Corp.

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24. Brad Katsuyama
IEX Group

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25. Antoine Shagoury
State Street Corp.

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26. David Gledhill
DBS Bank

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27. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group

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28. Andreas Preuss
Deutsche BÖrse

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29. Dan Schulman
PayPal Holdings

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30. Scott Dillon
Wells Fargo & Co.

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31. Mike Chinn
S&P Global Market Intelligence

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32. Craig Donohue
Options Clearing Corp.

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33. Gary Norcross
Fidelity National Information Services

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34. Steven O’Hanlon
Numerix

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35. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma

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36. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz

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37. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS

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38. Neal Pawar
AQR Capital Management

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39. David Harding
Winton Capital Management

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40. Chris Corrado
London Stock Exchange Group

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41. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives

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42. Jim Minnick
eVestment

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43. Stephane Dubois
Xignite

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44. Mazy Dar
OpenFin

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45. Yasuki Okai
NRI Holdings America

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46. Kim Fournais
Saxo Bank

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47. Jock Percy
Perseus

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48. Robert Schifellite
Broadridge Financial Solutions

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49. Brian Sentance
Xenomorph Software

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50. Pieter van der Does
Adyen

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