UK-based blockchain company nChain announced on Tuesday it has appointed Bitcoin Foundation’s founding executive director, Jon Matonis, as its new vice president of corporate strategy. The company stated that Matonis would support its business growth by developing commercial relationships, and evaluating opportunities for strategic investments and acquisitions.
According to nChain, Matonis entered the bitcoin space in 2012 and held various senior roles with Sumitomo Bank, VISA International, VeriSign, and Hushmail. He also created the Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) in 2013, hosted the Bitcoin/blockchain conference in Amsterdam in 2014, and enlisted seven regional chapter offices to the Bitcoin Foundation from countries such as France, Germany, and Bangladesh.
Speaking about Matonis’ appointment, Arthur Davis, Director of nChain, shared:
“Jon was immediately attractive to nChain. During his notable career, he has consistently led the integration of financial services and cryptography. His work has included foreign currency trading for Visa International, financial platform sales for RSA’s VeriSign – securing its first $5 million in revenue – and end-to-end encrypted messaging for Hush Communications where as CEO he recruited PGP’s Phil Zimmermann as Hushmail’s Chief Cryptographer. Jon’s philosophy for the Bitcoin protocol and network is fully in line with nChain’s vision of on-chain scalability with decentralisation, advanced native scripting for the construction of smart contracts, and a dedicated move away from monolithic software. We are excited to have Jon’s deep industry experience on our team, and look forward to working with him to achieve our vision for the Bitcoin blockchain.”
Matonis added:
“The resources and funding in place at nChain provide a unique opportunity to reshape the existing landscape of Bitcoin protocol influencers. It is imperative that we move towards a status quo where the actual protocol standard is separated from its primary reference implementation, similar to the existing architecture of the Linux kernel and its low-level abstraction layer.”