BitFury Taps Ex-CFTC Chair, Bitcoin Core Developer as Advisors

Blockchain infrastructure company BitFury has selected a number of high-profile figures to serve on its advisory and technical advisory boards.

Jun 25, 2015 at 4:01 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 11, 2021 at 11:44 a.m. UTC

BitFury has announced a pair of high-profile appointees to its advisory board and established a new body of technical advisors.

New to BitFury's advisory board are former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Dr James Newsome, and president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) Hernando de Soto.

Dr Newsome is also the former CEO of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). An appointee of President Bill Clinton, he assisted the administration as a member of the President's Working Group for Financial Markets and led the CFTC’s regulatory implementation of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA).

Dr Newsome currently serves as a founding partner of Delta Strategy Group, a full-service government affairs firm based in Washington, DC. De Soto heads the ILD, named by The Economist as one of the world's two most important think tanks.

Dr Newsome said he was honored to serve on the board, stating:

"The forward-thinking approach by BitFury founders and management team regarding education, regulation and support for the entire blockchain community are perfectly aligned with my views."

De Soto compared BitFury's work to mankind's efforts to manage and utilize its information over the centuries, saying blockchain technology "may just be one of the most significant contributions to the history of organizing knowledge".

The bitcoin mining firm has also opened a new office in Washington, DC, a move it suggests will put it closer to some of the US's biggest lobbyists and policy influencers.

Technical advisory board

Separate to its main board, BitFury has also established a technical advisory board that includes bitcoin luminaries Jeff Garzik, original bitcoin core developer and CEO of Dunvegan Space Systems, and Paul Brody, former IBM vice president and Internet of Things (IoT) expert.

Brody is currently the Americas Strategy Leader for the Technology Sector at Ernst & Young.

Echoing his past statements about blockchain technology, he said it has more uses than in just the financial industry:

"It's about securing a world of billions of smart devices. BitFury has a unique understanding of the scale and scope of the opportunity combined with their deep expertise in hardware and software."

Previously announced members of BitFury's advisory board include former federal prosecutor Jason Weinstein; Samsung Electronics president and chief strategy officer Young Sohn; former chairman and CEO of UMC Dr Jackson Hu and founder and Binary Capital partner Jonathan Teo.

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