The 2017 Tech 40: Blythe Masters

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.