Anchorage Hires Celsius’ Asaf Iram as Head of Risk

Digital asset custodian Anchorage has nabbed a trade operations veteran from Celsius Network to manage the risks facing its $4 billion crypto vault.

The new hire, Asaf Iram, said he will “connect the dots” between Anchorage’s financing, lending, custody and staking businesses as the leadership team’s first “Head of Risk.” He told CoinDesk his focus will be on ensuring Anchorage’s customers feel safe about their assets, explaining to them the risks of deploying those assets across different lending pools, be they conservative, moderate or aggressive, Iram said.

Iram previously spent a year and a half managing the trade desk for crypto lender Celsius Network. He came to that role after nearly three years in the arbitrage trenches as a fulltime crypto trader. It was a passion project that Iram said inspired him to quit the Tel Aviv Stock exchange in 2017.

There he said he was also a financial risk manager. Iram said he helped his company, DAR Finance LTD, navigate risk across different traders. Iram himself also served stints as a high frequency trader.

Anchorage acquired data analysis firm Merkle Data early last year, saying at the time it would boost the firm’s risk modeling capabilities. In May company executives pledged that new products built on those capabilities were in the works.