This is a big catch for the crypto sphere. Binance, the largest crypto platform in terms of trading volume, has managed to poach great talent from Microsoft (MSFT).
Rohit Wad has been Binance’s new chief technology officer (CTO) for four weeks, according to a blog post released on Friday by the company.
Wad was until this announcement "Corporate Vice President (Product and Engineering)" at Microsoft. His LinkedIn page has still not been updated as of time of writing. We can read there that he joined the software giant in October 2016 from Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms (FB), where he was engineering director.
He stayed a little over four years with the social media group. Before Facebook, Wad also worked a little over a year at Google (GOOGL), but he had already spent 20 years at Microsoft.
It is therefore a fine connoisseur of the tech sector and of Silicon Valley that Binance, which is in the midst of an offensive to gain the trust of regulators, has just recruited.
At Binance, Wad will "engineer scalable, compliant, and fast Web3 services and solutions that will welcome the next billion crypto users," the company said. "Beyond Web3, he wants to ensure that Binance continues to be the most secure, fastest, and liquid exchange in the world."
"Web3 and traditional tech companies that started in Web2 (like Amazon and Microsoft) will continue to coexist within their own spheres, or pockets, of innovation," Wad said in the blog post.
Binance Wants to Acquire Non-Crypto Firms
The race for talent has grown and intensified recently with the emergence of the crypto industry, the metaverse, and web3, the new generation of the internet. In other words, tech giants are no longer just in competition with their traditional rivals but now with startups to attract the best talents.
The advantage of these startups is that they have money, lots of money because venture capital firms are currently investing in their promises to completely disrupt traditional industries and tech.
Apple (AAPL) has just signed large checks in the space of a few months to avoid the departure of its talent, in particular to Facebook (FB), which focuses on the metaverse, a virtual world in which we will interact via avatars.
The iPhone maker will give its engineers bonuses ranging from $100,000 to $200,000 in the form of restricted stock units that are set to vest over the course of four years if the employees stay with Apple and do not take jobs at other companies. They could become more valuable over time if Apple’s stock price continues to rise.
Binance is currently on all fronts.
The platform wants to restore its reputation with regulators, particularly in the United States where they face questioning over its practices in terms of money laundering and illicit trading.
Binance also has ambitions to acquire companies outside the crypto space.
In February, Binance invested a $200 million in Forbes, a media that once sued the exchange giant for defamation. In an interview with The Financial Times in March, CEO Changpeng Zhao said the crypto exchange giant plans to invest in one or two firms across several business sectors. The aim of this investment spree is “to bring them into crypto.”
