Chia Names Misha Graboi CFO as Part of Global Expansion

Company’s appointment ahead of green, decentralized cryptocurrency’s adoption by multinationals and governments

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chia Network, Inc., a new energy-efficient decentralized blockchain founded by Bram Cohen, today named Misha Graboi as Chief Financial Officer. The appointment is a key step in Chia’s ramp-up of a widespread digital exchange network and rapid global adoption among financial firms, multinational companies and governments.

“Misha joining Chia as CFO is an important move for the organization as we rapidly scale up this year to aggressively build out Chialisp applications on top of the Chia blockchain,” said Gene Hoffman, Chia’s President & Chief Operating Officer. “I am thrilled to be working with Misha again after collaborating while he was an investment banker on the Emusic public offering, and later as he helped establish the financial infrastructure for Vindicia. Misha’s global experience with major financial institutions and sophisticated investors will be invaluable to our processes and leadership team.”

“I have known Gene for years and it’s very exciting to join Chia at such a critical time in its global expansion,” added Graboi. “Chia will offer multinationals and governments an environmentally friendly, decentralized trusted transaction infrastructure and I’m looking forward to leveraging my experience in technology, finance and global markets to help make the team’s vision a reality.”

Graboi joins Chia from various projects in the education, impact investing and new venture spaces after wrapping up his tenure with Delta-V Global Management, a consulting firm to asset managers. Between 2008 and 2018 he held various roles at PAAMCO Prisma, most recently as the CEO of PAAMCO Asia, and as the sector specialist for convertible arbitrage strategies for PAAMCO.

Earlier in his career Misha was an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs, where he headed European Internet Equity Research. He also served as a technology investment banker and Equity Research Analyst at CIBC Oppenheimer.

Graboi holds a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School and an MBA from Harvard Business School, as well as bachelor’s degree in business administration from Georgetown University.

About Chia Network

Chia Network Inc. was founded by Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent. Chia Network is a state-of-the-art open-source decentralized blockchain, digital currency and smart transaction platform. Using the first new secure Nakamoto consensus algorithm invented since Bitcoin, Chia aims to operate an eco-friendly, more secure and user-friendly payment system for cross border payments, issuing financial assets, lending, escrow payments, institutional custody and distributed identity. Chia’s “Proof of Space and Time” based blockchain reduces waste in “Proof of Work” based blockchains. Built to run Chialisp, the company’s newly developed smart coin language, Chia’s blockchain allows its users to build and execute secure "smart coin" transactions. Chia believes that “digital money” should be easier to use than cash, harder to lose and nearly impossible to steal. The Company is funded by leading venture capitalists including Slow Ventures, a16z, Naval Ravikant, Galaxy Digital, Greylock, True Ventures, MetaStable, Stillmark, DCM, and others. The Company’s Advisors include Dr. Dan Boneh, Research Partner at a16z and Applied Cryptography Professor at Stanford University; and Dr. Krzysztof Pietrzak, Cryptography Professor of IST Austria; and Ms. Katie Haun, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. For more information, chia.net and connect with us on Twitter (@chia_project), Facebook, GitHub, Reddit, and LinkedIn.