River Financial Taps Blockstream Co-Founder to Oversee Security

Source: Finance Magnates 2020-01-21

Crypto brokerage River Financial has hired Jonathan Wilkins, co-founder of Blockstream, as its new chief security officer (CSO).

Reported by Coindesk on Monday, Wilkins is bringing years of technical experience in the fintech startup in an area crucial for operations.

Currently, Wilkins is holding the position of CSO at Blockstream. His past experiences include security-centric roles at Microsoft, Yelp, Zynga, and Zero Knowledge, a pioneer of anonymous networking technology.

“By focusing on simplicity and what is best for users in the long term (dollar-cost averaging and holding) instead of pushing altcoins and encouraging more active trading in order to increase fees, River is closer to the historical ideal of a bank,” the new hire told the publication in his statement.

“I wanted to be part of a company concerned with helping its community grow its wealth and providing an alternative to today’s more predatory financial institutions.”

I’m thrilled to announce that Jonathan Wilkins has joined @RiverFinancial as CSO. His deep technical expertise and unwavering commitment to security perfectly aligns with our mission to have the most advanced and secure Bitcoin infrastructure in the world. https://t.co/c4eOugGKaS

— Alexander Leishman 🇺🇸 (@Leishman) January 20, 2020

Making of a Bitcoin-only platform

Meanwhile, River is aiming to capture the institutional market for buying and selling digital currencies. Though initially it is only offers trading services for Bitcoin, its future plans are still unknown.

Founded last year, the San Francisco-based company has already released its closed beta version to test its services.

“We believe bitcoin is going to be the most dominant cryptocurrency. If anything becomes a world money, it’s going to be bitcoin,” Alexander Leishman, founder and CEO of River Financial, said.

The company is mostly following the path of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Square, which also offer only buying and selling option for Bitcoin.

In addition, River also became one of the earliest adopters of Lightning Network to make its services more efficient for micro-payments.

River Financial Taps Blockstream Co-Founder to Oversee Security

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