< The 2017 Tech 40

19. Blythe Masters
Chief Executive Officer
Digital Asset Holdings
Last year: 17

There has been no shortage of milestones for Digital Asset Holdings, the distributed-ledger technology company co-founded in 2014 by Sunil Hirani, CEO of trueEX Group, and Donald Wilson Jr., CEO of DRW Trading Group. The most headline-grabbing was the March 2015 appointment of Blythe Masters as CEO. The former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive — she had served as head of global commodities and CFO of the investment bank, among other senior roles — brought star power and a penchant for evangelizing just as blockchain hype was on the upswing. Yet Masters all along has counseled patience, telling audiences that it could take several years for blockchain to become commonplace. The New York–based company's nuts-and-bolts work has included support for open sourcing: offering up the Digital Asset Modeling Language and donating the Hyperledger trademark and code to the Linux Foundation. In February 2016, Digital Asset announced that it had raised more than $60 million from investors including Accenture, Australian Securities Exchange parent ASX Group, Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., IBM, and JPMorgan. Digital Asset has partnered with DTCC on a proof of concept for processing U.S. Treasury and Agency repurchase agreements transactions. It is also working on a posttrade cash equities platform for ASX.

 
The 2017 Tech 40

1. Adena Friedman NASDAQ 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 3. Robert Goldstein BlackRock 4. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange Model Portfolios to Deliver Alternative Asset Exposure Sponsored by BlackRock April 29, 2025 5. Lance Uggla IHS Markit

6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 7. David Craig Thomson Reuters 8. Michael Spencer NEX Group 9. Don Callahan Citigroup 10. Elisha Wiesel Goldman Sachs Group

11. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 12. Terrence Duffy CME Group 13. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 14. Sean Belka Fidelity Investments 15. Chris Concannon CBOE Holdings

16. Guy Chiarello First Data Corp. 17. Steven Lieblich Citadel 18. David Rutter R3CEV 19. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings 20. Alfred Spector Two Sigma Investments

21. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw Group 22. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 23. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 24. David Gledhill DBS Bank 25. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings

26. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. 27. Peter Brown & Robert Mercer Renaissance Technologies 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 29. Peter Cherecwich Northern Trust Corp. 30. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence

31. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group 32. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services 34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma

36. Brian Conlon First Derivatives and Kx Systems 37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS 38. Michael Cooper BT Radianz 39. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions 40. Jim Minnick eVestment