Dive Brief:

• Dan Chen, formerly the vice president of capital markets and bank partnerships for buy now, pay later company Affirm, has joined cryptocurrency exchange Gemini Trust as its CFO, he announced Tuesday in social posts on LinkedIn and X.
• The appointment comes as the New York-based Gemini, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, reportedly gears up for an initial public offering — with the firm confidentially filing for an IPO working with banks Citigroup and Goldmans Sachs, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter.
• “Crypto is the most dynamic sector in finance and Gemini is at the forefront of this revolution — making it simple and secure to engage on the digital asset frontier,” Chen wrote on his social media. “I’m looking forward to helping Gemini scale by driving financial strategy as the company enters its next phase of growth.”

Dive Insight:

The appointment closes a search for an experienced financial lead by the cryptocurrency exchange, and could signal momentum in Gemini’s reported bid to go public.

In a job listing for the CFO role posted on cryptojobs.com eight months ago, Gemini noted the incoming finance chief’s “immediate focus will be on identifying operational efficiencies across the finance org, streamlining and unifying financial processes and workstreams, and bringing more structure and scalability to ensure that we are poised for future growth.”

According to the job posting, the position offers a base salary range between $318,000 to $397,000 in the states of New York, California and Washington, a discretionary annual bonus and a new hire equity grant, among other compensation.

Chen spent three years in his role at the San Francisco, California-based Affirm, which went public in 2021 with an IPO that valued the BNPL provider at $24 billion, according to a Forbes report at the time. Starting his career at Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, he has previously held CFO roles for small business banking platform Nearside, which was acquired by Plastiq, and Blue Foundry Bank, according to his LinkedIn profile. He served as treasurer for Cross River Bank for two years, and has held executive roles at MetLife Investments and Morgan Stanley.

The Affirm alum is also taking Gemini’s financial reins as the exchange closes the books on several regulatory actions which emerged in the wake of the 2022 collapse of fellow crypto exchange FTX — and as the wider cryptocurrency industry eyes growing opportunities that could arise from the Trump administration’s efforts to foster a friendlier relationship with crypto-related businesses. 

In January, ahead of a hearing set for just after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Gemini agreed to pay a $5 million civil penalty to settle charges from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for making false statements to the commission in connecting with a derivatives  product certification, according to a press release. 

In another regulatory action, the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 charged both Gemini and Genesis Global Capital with selling unregistered securities through the Gemini Earn cryptocurrency lending platform, CFO Dive previously reported. Last March, Genesis agreed to pay a $21 million penalty to settle the charges, according to an SEC release.

Last month, however, the SEC informed Gemini’s legal counsel that it had dropped its investigation and would not be pursuing an enforcement action against the crypto company, Co-founder and President Cameron Winklevoss wrote in a post on X.

“The SEC cost us tens of millions of dollars in legal bills alone and hundreds of millions in lost productivity, creativity, and innovation,” Winklevoss wrote. “Of course Gemini is not alone. The SEC’s behavior in aggregate towards other crypto companies and projects cost orders of magnitude more and caused unquantifiable loss in economic growth for America.”

The closed investigation is one among several targeting cryptocurrency-related firms the SEC has dropped in the early days of President Trump’s second term, coming as his administration takes various steps to bring the cryptocurrency industry into the mainstream financial system’s fold. As well as Gemini, the SEC also recently dropped investigations into Robinhood’s crypto unit and into cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, CFO Dive previously reported.

Gemini did not immediately respond to requests for comment.