Gary Cohn, formerly the Chief Economic Advisor to President Trump and former President and COO of Goldman Sachs, has joined a blockchain startup, Spring Labs, as an advisor.
Spring Labs is building a “decentralized network for identity and credit” to provide a more secure and transparent platform for the financial services industry. Founded by online lender Avant alumni, CEO Adam Jiwan also co-founded student loan platform Future Finance as well as having worked on Wall Street for several years.
Adding Cohn, who departed the Trump administration ostensibly in opposition to the President’s stance on trade policy, is prominent addition to the growing list of advisors for the Fintech startup. It is also represents the growing willingness of old school finance types to embrace the potential for distributed ledger technology to be utilized to drive efficiencies and boost value in financial services.
Cohn said in a press release, he has been “very interested in blockchain technology for a number of years, and Spring Labs is developing a network that could have profound implications for the financial services sector, among others.”
Jiwan stated there is no need to do an initial coin offering as a way to raise capital but there may be a possibility to “deploy a digital asset” at some point in the future.
This past March, Spring Labs raised $14.75 million in seed funding. The raise was led by August Capital with participation from Victory Park Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital, as well as some big names in the blockchain space such as Multicoin Capital, Wavemaker Genesis, and Jump Capital.
Jiwan was quoted by Bloomberg explaining Cohn’s value:
“We envision [Cohn] playing a role around helping us think through for developing something that’s regulatory compliant and that others need to see in order to adapt it.”