BitGo brings on early IEX employee from CoinList to forge relationships with Wall Street

Rob Salman, the trading veteran and early IEX employee, has found a new home in the cryptocurrency world.

The former head of business development at CoinList, the token sale platform, joined crypto custody provider BitGo as its new head of business development, reporting to CEO Mike Belshe. The Block first reported on Salman joining CoinList as well as his exit.

The University of Texas graduate dove into crypto last year after spending 20 years in the U.S. equity trading and exchange world. He was one of the founding employees at upstart equities exchange IEX, the former dark pool made famous in Michael Lewis' "Flash Boys." He also held positions at Citadel as a director in its investment group. Prior to that he was a managing director at Nasdaq, where he was responsible for servicing broker dealer clients with information on pricing and technology.

Then, he sat alongside current NYSE president Stacey Cunningham, managing a book of 120 accounts.

Now, Salman is bringing his trading know-how and market structure relationships to BitGo to help build out the firm's vision for a virtual order book, which will enable its clients to trade on multiple exchanges without moving their coins out of its cold storage systems.

The new platform could solve a major problem facing investors in the spine-tingling volatile market, as BitGo's Belshe said in an exclusive interview. Namely, it could reduce the chances of a client's funds being jeopardized by an exchange hack and eliminates many of the difficulties associated with trading across multiple venues, he said.

To be sure, the project is in its earliest stages. For instance, the firm will need to secure a partnership with an order management system provider to sit between clients and BitGo. And, of course, it needs to convince big exchanges to get on board with the idea. That's a tough feat considering many exchanges in crypto also compete with BitGo as custodians, including Coinbase and Gemini.

Salman's role will require him to forge new relationships between BitGo and the traditional equities world.

"There is a need to source liquidity in a secure safe environment in this ecosystem," Salman noted. "In short, I will be helping build the trust, bringing on new OTC providers, and source liquidity in a safe secure way."

"There are also some prop, market making firms that are not here yet that I can help forge those relationships with," Salman added.

"Looking down the road it will be about getting traditional players from the buy-side — that would be great for us."