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Paradigm’s top management has undergone drastic changes, and what’s going on inside top-tier encryption VCs?

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Lianchuang Fred resigned from his position as managing partner and will continue to serve as a general partner. He will then support bioscience research and investment. This is Paradigm's third recent executive change.

The history of a company is the history of changes in its executive personnel. In the past three months, there have been significant changes in the top management of Paradigm, which is worth our attention.

According to BlockBeats, Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Paradigm, announced his resignation today and will remain with the company as a general partner. Five days ago, Frankie and Caitlin Pintavorn were promoted to research partners at Paradigm. In addition, according to BlockBeats, Nathan Apsel, CFO of the crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, and Reena Jashnani-Slusarz, general counsel, resigned in mid-September.

Fred Ehrsam: From Co-founder to General Partner

Paradigm co-founder Ehrsam, born in Boston, can be said to be a legendary figure. He specialized in playing video games in high school and was a passionate World of Warcraft player, where he was introduced to the concept of Crypto. In 2010, Ehrsam graduated with honors from Duke University with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a minor in Economics. After graduating from Duke University, Ehrsam became a foreign exchange trader at Goldman Sachs in New York. He also worked as an investment portfolio analyst at BlackRock in New York.

The opportunity to enter the encryption industry formally came when Ehrsam learned about Bitcoin from a paper and began trading in his spare time.

In 2012, cryptocurrency enthusiasts and traders often interacted on the Bitcoin subreddit forum. Ehrsam and Brian Armstrong met here and together founded Coinbase in an apartment in San Francisco. It is reported that Ehrsam contacted his alma mater, Duke University, during the financing round and the initial investment increased by 100 times in Coinbase's Series C financing in 2015.

When Ehrsam was the CEO of Coinbase, he led the company from 2012 to 2017, developing it into an enterprise with 13 million users and a valuation of $1.6 billion. At the end of 2017, Ehrsam transitioned from the day-to-day operations of Coinbase to focusing on building blockchain-based applications.

In January 2017, Ehrsam announced his departure from the company but would continue to stay on the board. As of April 2021, he still held 8.9% of Coinbase's stock and was assigned to the company's audit committee prior to its public offering in April 2021. Interestingly, as of May 27, 2022, analysis of regulatory filings shows that since Coinbase went public, four executives, including Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, have collectively earned about $1.2 billion in proceeds from selling their shares.

Due to his legendary experience, Ehrsam was also written into the novel "Crypto King: A Startup Seeks to Bring Cryptocurrency out of Silicon Valley and into Wall Street" as a prototype.

After leaving Coinbase, Ehrsam's entrepreneurial journey did not stop there. In 2018, Ehrsam co-founded the cryptocurrency investment company Paradigm with former Sequoia Capital investor Matt Huang. At Paradigm, they focus on investing in cryptocurrencies and related companies, with Ehrsam serving as managing partner.

Left: Ehrsam; Right: Matt Huang

However, Ehrsam has chosen to resign from his position as managing partner at Paradigm and will continue to serve as a general partner.

As for the reason for doing so, Ehrsam stated on his social media that "this change allows me to free up some time to explore the scientific fields that I am personally passionate about. From Hal Finney and cryonics to Vitalik and Brian Armstrong's recent support for longevity research, people's interest in the intersection of biology and cryptography has existed for a long time. For years, I have personally been investing in and supporting biological research, and I am excited to increase these efforts."

Chief Financial Officer Nathan Apsel leaves Paradigm for Maveron

Nathan Apsel, former CFO of Paradigm, is a colorful and experienced individual. Prior to joining Paradigm, Nathan was the CFO of 8VC. Before that, he was a senior manager at PwC, responsible for asset management. He holds a Master's degree in Accounting from the University of Oregon.

On September 2nd, an internal email obtained by The Block showed that Nathan Apsel, the Chief Financial Officer, and Reena Jashnani-Slusarz, the General Counsel, of the cryptocurrency venture capital firm Paradigm will resign in mid-September. Jashnani-Slusarz joined Paradigm in 2021 as GC and previously served as Managing Director and Deputy General Counsel at Elementum Advisors, LLC.

After leaving Paradigm, Nathan joined Maveron as the Chief Financial Officer. At Maveron, Nathan provided leadership in all areas of finance, operations, and strategic projects.

According to a source, current Chief Legal Officer Katie Biber will continue to lead the legal team, and the company will announce a new Chief Financial Officer in the coming months. Paradigm recently hired Alex Grieve as head of policy team and Cookie Wiese as head of human resources, so the overall number of employees has not changed.

Two newly appointed partners promoted

Five days ago, according to BlockBeats, co-founder Matt Huang announced two personnel appointments on social media, promoting two new partners Caitlin Pintavorn (@caitlinxyz) and Frankie (@FrankieIsLost).

It is reported that Caitlin Pintavorn was previously an investor at Insight Partners, focusing on cryptocurrency. Prior to joining Insight, Caitlin worked at PathAI and Two Sigma, and holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Brown University.

Caitlin Pintavorn's experience entering the cryptocurrency industry is also interesting. When the global pandemic caused people's lives to shift online, Caitlin Pintavorn began searching for a community to belong to on the internet. Eventually, she found her place on Twitter and Discord servers in the cryptocurrency field. Here, she discussed cryptocurrency with many experts online, designed NFTs, and conducted research on DAOs. She believes that this field is full of vitality and creativity. As an investor at Insight Partners, she has interacted with hundreds of founders, further immersing herself in this field.

In addition, Frankie (@FrankieIsLost) has been promoted to a research partner at Paradigm. Prior to this, Frankie was a machine learning engineer, quantitative developer, and trader, and earned degrees in computer science and econometrics.

Behind the high-level personnel changes, where is the future path of Paradigm?

After Fred Ehrsam's departure, the entire cryptocurrency industry has different views on the future of Paradigm. Some people think that this marks the decline of the company, while others believe it is a new beginning. Senior personnel changes often mean strategic adjustments and changes in direction for companies. However, for Paradigm, such changes actually hide more opportunities and challenges. So, what else happened behind the senior personnel changes at Paradigm?

Paradigm's Internal and External Impact

Last month, the major event that occurred at Paradigm was its investment project Reflexer openly mocking Paradigm, repurchasing the FLX tokens held by Paradigm and directly permanently destroying 50% of the repurchased tokens, choosing to go their separate ways.

Sarah: What did Paradigm do? Ameen: It will be disclosed, but not now. Source: Discord

In Reflexer's "Condemnation Edict", Reflexer mentioned that Paradigm's investment in FTX has caused a setback in the cryptocurrency industry, and after the update of Paradigm's official website, descriptions about many crypto and web3 were deleted, turning to "cutting-edge" technologies including AI.