Former global head and managing director at JPMorgan Chase, Paul Camp, joins Circle Internet Financial as corporate treasurer, executive vice preside of financial operations, and CFO.
"We're been interested in trying to find an additional partner on the team with highly relevant leadership capacity," stated Circle's founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire.
"Paul had grown up in that core payments infrastructure. That was really a key piece of what we were looking for."
As reported by The New York Times, Paul Camp was chosen after a yearlong process and will enrich Circle with his 18+ years of expertise in the banking industry, which includes former executive positions at Deutsche Bank, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. Allaire said he expects Camp to play a big role in changing the negative perception of most bankers on Bitcoin.
"Paul is a very intelligent person, a very smart person," explained Allaire. "I think the vision of an Internet platform – a common Internet platform for value exchange – really captured his imagination. I think he’s also at the point in his career where he’s grown these businesses within big companies and was really excited to build something from the ground up."
While big banks and traditional financial services companies have long been monopolizing the global transactions business, their leaders are starting to show interests in Bitcoin and seeing real opportunities in the digital currency space.
Talking to the New York Times' DealBook, Allaire stated:
"Our view is that consumer finance, what people think of as retail finance — that arena is ripe for disruption. Bitcoin is absolutely a core platform and asset format that we are dependent on to build this business."
It appears that Camp has broken away from JPMorgan Chase's position towards Bitcoin. The financial giant is known to have made some mildly antagonistic moves towards digital currencies.
Last year, the firm filed a patent for a digital currency system with similarities with Bitcoin. In October, JP Morgan Chase chairman and chief executive, James Dimon, stated publicly that he considered Bitcoin as a competitor, adding that they were ready to compete.
Based in Boston, Circle Internet Financial is a consumer finance company focused on disrupting the financial sector with digital currency centric products and services.
In late September, the company moved out of beta and launched to the public with the promise of bringing bank-like features to a Bitcoin web wallet.
Last month, Circle announced the launch of the company's new native apps for both iOS and Android, continuing its progression into the mainstream users market, and revealed its global expansion plans.
Did you enjoy this article? You may also be interested in reading these ones: