(Bloomberg) -- Crypto custodian Copper Technologies Ltd. has hired Amar Kuchinad, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managing director, to replace Dmitry Tokarev as group chief executive, as it looks to secure more traditional financial firms as clients and make inroads in the US market.
Tokarev, who founded Copper in 2018, will take on the role of founder director on the company’s board, the London-headquartered business said in a statement on Monday. The board is led by former UK finance minister Philip Hammond.
“We considered the next best person to take this business into the traditional market,” Tokarev said in an interview. “We want to work with banks.”
Kuchinad, who is based in New York, previously founded bond trading platform Electronifie, which was acquired by rival Trumid in 2017. He later served as a senior managing director at alternative investment manager Pretium Partners and was formerly a senior policy adviser on trading and markets rules at the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Copper has been splitting its resources and energy by targeting potential clients in crypto markets and trying to become the go-to player for traditional financial companies looking for blockchain services. A previous licensing deal with State Street Corp. was scrapped in March last year.
Copper’s ClearLoop, an off-exchange settlement platform for digital assets, processed around $121.2 billion in trading volume in July, almost double that of two months earlier.
Tokarev’s exit marks the latest step in a reshuffle of the company’s top executives. Its chief commercial officer Boris Bohrer-Bilowitzki left the firm in July and was replaced by Michael Roberts, who previously oversaw Bank of America Corp.’s prime brokerage platform in Europe. CoinDesk first reported Tokarev’s plans to leave his role.
Strategy shift
Copper started discussions around changes to its long-term priorities in April this year, Tokarev said. It concluded that the best long-term strategy would be to focus squarely on how its blockchain-based collateral management technology could be used by traditional financial companies, he said. Kuchinad entered the picture over the summer.
“For Copper, most of the opportunities — especially post-election — would be in a regulated market, and quite a lot of them frankly are going to be in the US,” Tokarev said.
As part of the move, the company plans to seek custodial or money-transmitter licenses in the country, including a so-called BitLicense in New York, Kuchinad said during a joint interview with Tokarev.
Tokarev is the company’s largest shareholder, a status that he plans to maintain for the time being. He and Kuchinad will work together in a transitional handover for the next few months. Kuchinad plans to split his time between Copper’s New York and London offices among other locations, he said.
Copper last raised $221 million in a prolonged series C funding round in 2022. Its investors include Barclays, Target Global and Dawn Capital. It has no plans to raise further capital in the near future, Kuchinad said.
“We have plenty of runway to execute on the business plan,” he said. “Any fundraising would be opportunistic or with strategic partners in mind.”
(Updates to add context on fundraising. An earlier version corrected a venture capital investor’s name to Target Global.)
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