Taylor Heads to Crypto World with Unizen

Former Bank of New York Mellon global head of e-FX sales James Taylor has joined digital assets firm Unizen in a newly created chief business development officer role.

Taylor, who has also held senior e-FX sales roles at JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Barclays Capital, has been tasked with introducing Unizen to a multitude of global financial institutions, including investment banks, asset managers, hedge funds, corporates, sovereign wealth funds, and central banks. Unizen says his expertise and professional network are crucial to nurturing new long-term partnerships and developing global opportunities.

The hire marks a new chapter for Unizen, the firm says, “providing the team with the expertise to facilitate the ultimate goal of bringing together centralised institutions and decentralised providers”.

It also observes Taylor’s hire marks a shift in dynamics between the traditional financial sector and blockchain space, now driven not by the opposition but by collaboration.

“Without a doubt, the Unizen team is top notch in terms of talent, but what impresses me the most is the moral philosophy I see applied by all,” says Taylor. “I’m very excited by our ambition to be the universal and unified gateway through which traditional financial market participants access new digital asset marketplaces.

“Unizen is building a centralised-decentralised ecosystem (CeDeFi) to address the challenges that lie ahead of broader crypto acceptance and adoption, including AML, KYC, security and fragmented liquidity,” he adds

Unizen itself, says, “The addition of James Taylor to the Unizen team is a leap towards building a powerful CeDeFi and compliant liquidity converging with the traditional financial sector. The decision to contribute 20+ years of institutional experience to a decentralised ecosystem has the potential to open a new stage of global blockchain adoption.”