MoonPay appoints acting CFTC chair Caroline Pham as chief legal officer amid sector hiring surge
Crypto payments business MoonPay has appointed Caroline Pham, the acting chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as its new chief legal officer.
Pham will also take on the role of chief administration officer, with responsibility for MoonPay’s global legal and administrative functions, including oversight of its policy and regulatory strategy. She will join the company once she has concluded her role at the CFTC.
Her appointment comes amid a wider wave of senior in-house legal hires across the digital assets and blockchain sector this month, as businesses strengthen compliance and regulatory capabilities.
MoonPay was founded in 2019 and provides infrastructure for crypto trading, payments and stablecoins. The company focuses on connecting traditional payment systems with blockchain technology, enabling users and businesses to access digital assets through conventional financial rails.
Ivan Soto-Wright, MoonPay’s co-founder and chief executive, said Pham brought a rare combination of regulatory expertise and market understanding. He described her as “one of the most influential leaders in US financial regulation”, adding that her experience across regulation, traditional finance and market structure made her well placed to support MoonPay’s growth and compliance objectives.
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Pham has spent almost four years at the CFTC. She was sworn in as a commissioner in April 2022 and became acting chair in January this year. During her tenure, she has played a central role in regulatory innovation and digital asset policy development.
Most recently, she championed the CFTC’s Digital Asset Markets Pilots Program, which was launched earlier this month. The initiative is aimed at testing new regulatory approaches in response to the rapid growth of digital asset markets.
Before joining the CFTC, Pham spent seven and a half years at US investment bank Citi. Her roles there included head of market structure for strategic initiatives and head of capital markets regulation. Earlier in her career, she also worked at the CFTC as special counsel and as a policy adviser to former commissioner Scott O’Malia.
MoonPay’s appointment of Pham follows a series of high-profile legal hires across the sector. This week, AI and blockchain business AIxCrypto named former Paul Hastings and WilmerHale partner Andrew Grossman as head of legal. Grossman joined from Stealth, another AI and crypto business, where he served as general counsel.
At AIxCrypto, Grossman will oversee legal, compliance and governance matters, including securities disclosures, fund and investment compliance and commercial agreements.
Earlier this month, asset tokenisation company Securitise appointed Jerome Roche, formerly legal head for digital assets at PayPal, as its general counsel.
Together, the appointments highlight continued efforts by digital assets businesses to bolster regulatory engagement and legal oversight as the sector matures.