Apex Group Taps Ouaknine as Global Head of Digital Markets Infrastructure & Wealth Distribution

Apex Group has appointed Jørgen Ouaknine as Global Head of Digital Markets Infrastructure & Wealth Distribution. Based in New York City and reporting to Georges Archibald, CEO of Apex Distribution Ouaknine will oversee the firm’s strategy across digital markets infrastructure and wealth distribution. In this role, he focuses on expanding relationships with digital exchanges, financial market infrastructures, and intermediaries to connect fund managers with new distribution channels and capital sources, while supporting Apex’s capabilities in digital assets and tokenisation.

Ouaknine joins Apex from Euroclear, where he most recently served as Global Head of Innovation & Digital Assets and Head of Products Americas. During his tenure at Euroclear, he established the company’s digital assets practice and led the launch of its initial digital market infrastructure. His professional background also includes several senior leadership positions at BNP Paribas focusing on strategy, transformation, and digital innovation.

“Capital markets are moving toward a more connected model, where infrastructure, distribution and access to capital increasingly converge,” says Ouaknine. “Apex Group is uniquely positioned at that intersection, with capabilities spanning distribution, technology and operations. I’m very excited to join the team and work with clients and partners to open new distribution channels, connect investment opportunities with new pools of capital and help build the market infrastructure needed to support them at scale.”

DataFi Appoints Flannery to Lead Institutional Markets and Ecosystems

DataFi Grouph has appointed Heather Leigh Flannery as its new Head of Institutional Markets and Canton Network/Ethereum Ecosystems. In this role, Flannery is tasked with leading the company’s commercial launch, expanding its footprint in the US market, managing strategic partnerships and driving policy and regulatory engagement across the institutional finance sector. The appointment serves as a strategic extension of an existing alliance between DataFi Group and AI MINDSystems Impact, where Flannery will continue to concurrently serve as Co-Founder, Board Chair, and CEO.

DataFi Group is a specialist in blockchain-based quantitative market infrastructure, risk engine design, and automated market making (AMM) protocols. The company specialises in providing capital-efficient, agent-native volatility and risk management tools. Its core offerings include the GM! Index family (which delivers continuous benchmark pricing across crypto and tokenised commodities), a proprietary quantitative Probability Density Foundation Model, and the Multi-Sector x402 Agent Suite – a set of automated API protocols that allow AI agents and smart contracts to autonomously price and settle risk under strict compliance structures.

The company’s technology is deeply intertwined with decentralised finance (DeFi) and digital assets by serving as a critical pricing and settlement layer for the rapidly growing perpetual futures (“perps”) market. Traditionally popular in DeFi for offering 24/7 trading and high capital efficiency, perps have suffered from oracle manipulation risks and fragmented liquidity. DataFi Group bridges this gap by bringing its unmanipulable, probability-density-backed continuous markets to both the public Ethereum EVM DeFi ecosystem and the private institutional rails of the Canton Network, effectively merging decentralised liquidity with institutional-grade clearing rails.

Through Flannery’s dual leadership, DataFi Group will also help connect these universal digital asset mechanics with new real-world asset classes. Specifically, AI MINDSystems will utilise DataFi’s index feeds to power its institutional data market, showcasing how advanced blockchain infrastructure can bring safe price discovery, liquidity and financialisation to tokenised personal and health data estates.

Accenture Taps Bob Zeglarski as Principal Director – Digital Assets

Consulting firm Accenture has recruited Bob Zeglarski as Principal Director – Digital Assets. He was most recently Associate General Counsel and Executive Director for Digital Assets at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC). In his new role, Zeglarski will help to guide institutions “through complex regulatory landscapes while designing and implementing scalable, future-proof digital asset and tokenisation strategies.”

Former SEC Commissioner Roisman Joins Fireblocks

Blockchain infrastructure provider Fireblocks has appointed former Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Elad Roisman as its new Chief Regulatory and Policy Officer and General Counsel, Regulatory.

In this Washington, D.C.-based role, Roisman will oversee the company’s global regulatory strategy and lead policy engagement with lawmakers. His appointment comes as Fireblocks expands its services past digital asset custody into tokenisation, payments, stablecoins and trading infrastructure for traditional finance and FinTech corporations alike.

Between his time at the SEC and joining Fireblocks, Roisman was a Partner at the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.

Jason Rozovsky Expands Clifford Chance’s Digital Assets Team

Global law firm Clifford Chance has expanded its US digital assets and private capital team with the appointment of Jason Rozovsky as counsel to its Funds & Asset Management group in New York.

Rozovsky brings more than a decade of experience in the enterprise blockchain and digital assets sectors, where he has provided strategic transactional, product and regulatory counsel. He previously worked at Interop Labs, Accenture and R3.

Coinbase Appoints Builder Witoff as CTO

Digital asset platform provider Coinbase has a new CTO in Rob Witoff, a veteran technology builder who originally joined the company in 2014 and then rejoined in 2024. Witoff says that in 2009 he got “hooked on Bitcoin empowering builders with programmable money” and that as CTO his goal is to make Coinbase “the best place in the world to build.”

During his first stint at Coinbase, Witoff held roles related to infrastructure and security. He left Coinbase in 2017 and later co-founded a startup called Unit 410, which focused on crypto cold storage and staking. Unit 410 was acquired by Coinbase in 2024 and Witoff rejoined the company as Head of Platform.

Consensys Suspends Metamask Releases Due to Contractor’s North Korea Links

Ethereum specialist Consensys suspended releases of its popular MetaMask wallet earlier this year after determining that a contractor with links to North Korea had access to its code for about a month.

The unnamed contractor, who worked via a third-party service provider, was determined to have made contributions to MetaMask-related code. Consensys – which reported the incident to law enforcement – says an investigation found no theft of assets or data, and no insertion of malicious code.

Bank of America Appoints Sonali Theisen to Head its Digital Assets Platform

Band of America has named Sonali Theisen ?as ?head of its global digital assets platform. Based in New York City, she will combine her new role, which is to “oversee design, development, scaling and governance of the bank’s digital-assets platform,” with her current responsibilities as head ?of ?Global Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities E?trading and ?markets strategic investments.

Theisen ?will work alongside London-based digital asset transformation chief Adam Dixon, who oversees “tokenised deposits and stablecoins, digital collateral mobility, and cryptocurrency trading, settlement and custody.

Broadridge Taps Mark Nichols as Co-President of Digital Assets

Broadridge Financial Solutions has recruited Mark Nichols to be Co-President of its Digital Assets business unit. Nichols, who joints from EY where he was a Partner, will lead Broadridge’s strategy, product development, and execution in the tokenisation and digital asset arena. He will work alongside Co-President German Soto, who adds the Co-President title to his Chief Product Officer role.

Broadridge enables on-chain proxy voting and governance, provides digital asset infrastructure including post trade, wallets and custody, and supports the scaling of digital asset capabilities across multiple asset classes. Additionally, Broadridge’s Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) solution is the world’s largest institutional platform for settling tokenised real assets, tokenising more than $365 billion per day.

Ethereum Foundation Sheds Staff, Researchers Depart to Launch Ethlab

The Ethereum Foundation is cutting approximately 20% of its staff in a reorganisation that will reduce its operating budget by 40% and slow a drain on its treasury funds. The resulting organization will focus on enterprise engagement, financial infrastructure and policy coordination, as well as continuing work on censorship resistance and self-sovereign architecture.

Meanwhile, five key researchers left the foundation to launch Ethlabs, a non-profit R&D lab. The researchers – Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf and Julian Ma – will focus on consensus, cryptography and execution-layer research, and so will overlap with continuing research at the foundation. Initial backing for Ethlabs has been provided by Bitmine, Sharplink and Consensys founder Joe Lubin.