Blockchain Hires a CFO as Its Reportedly Preparing to Go Public in the Next Few Years

Cryptocurrency wallet provider Blockchain has recently hired its first chief financial officer (CFO), according to the LinkedIn profile of Macrina Kgil, who joined the company in November of this year.

As first reported by The Information, Kgil was the CFO of lending firm Springleaf Financial Services when the company went public back in 2013, and has also worked as a CFO at GPB Capital, an asset management firm, from 2016 to 2018.

Per the news outlet, Blockchain’s CEO Peter Smith confirmed the hire during an interview, and revealed Kgil would be instrumental for the crypto firm as it’s looking to go public “in the next few years.”

Founded in 2011, Blockchain is one of the most prominent cryptocurrency-related firms. Earlier this year, it crossed the 25 million wallet milestone, and currently has over 30 million users, and 150 employees.

The first has, according to its own website, processed over 100 million transactions and is currently present in 140 countries.  As CryptoGlobe covered, Blockchain launched an over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk in late September, in a move set to let users make large traders outside of public cryptocurrency exchanges

Last month, it notably launched the “largest airdrop in the history of crypto” by giving away $125 million in Stellar Lumens (XLM) to users who passed know your customer (KYC) checks, which made it controversial within the crypto community. At the time, the company announced:

For the first time ever, we are giving away a total of $125,000,000 to our users in the form of XLM. All Blockchain users need to do is log in to their wallets (or sign up if you don’t yet have a Blockchain Wallet) and verify their identities.

Blockchain’s progress this year didn’t stop there. The firm has also launched a hardware wallet from Ledger, which reportedly allows its users to seamlessly and securely store their cryptoassets offline. At the time, Smith revealed the company has processed over $200 billion in consumer crypto transactions in the last two years, and that its users store “millions” of BTC, BCH and ETH on its platform.