Wall Street is competing for crypto talent! Wells Fargo is hiring a "Tokenized Deposit" manager, and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are also opening blockchain job positions.

Wells Fargo released a “Digital Asset Services Lead” position four days ago, with responsibilities including developing a 3-5 year strategy encompassing tokenized deposits, on-chain collateral, intraday liquidity, and 24/7 programmable payments. Previously, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase have also recruited senior talent in the crypto space.
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(Additional background: Chinese phone maker OnePlus “disguised as a Hong Kong merchant” recruiting engineers in Taiwan! Chairman Liu Zhaohu is wanted by Taiwan authorities)

Table of Contents

• Wells Fargo: Looking for someone to connect “Traditional Payments × Blockchain”
• Morgan Stanley creates new roles, using E*Trade to sell crypto; Goldman Sachs aggressively hires blockchain talent
• Trends seen from talent competition

According to Frank Chaparro, Director of The Block, the three major Wall Street banks have consecutively laid out crypto talent within the same month, signaling that traditional financial institutions are shifting toward “comprehensive development” of digital asset infrastructure.

Wells Fargo: Looking for someone to connect “Traditional Payments × Blockchain”

Chaparro revealed that Wells Fargo is not just seeking an ordinary blockchain engineer but a senior executive capable of formulating a 3-5 year strategic blueprint. The role’s responsibilities are very specific:

• Tokenized Deposits: Representing bank deposits as tokens on the blockchain
• On-chain Collateral: Achieving real-time settlement and tracking of collateral
• Intraday Liquidity: Improving capital turnover efficiency through blockchain
• 24/7 Programmable Payments: Breaking through traditional banking hours

More importantly, these on-chain services must be fully integrated with existing payment rails, including wire transfers, ACH, RTP, FedNow, and SWIFT. This indicates Wells Fargo’s goal is not to run isolated blockchain experiments but to embed blockchain capabilities directly into its extensive traditional payment network.

Morgan Stanley creates new roles, using E*Trade to sell crypto; Goldman Sachs aggressively hires blockchain talent

Morgan Stanley is also active. At the end of January, the bank appointed senior executive Amy Oldenburg as the first “Digital Asset Strategy Lead,” a newly created position. Oldenburg has served Morgan Stanley for over 20 years, previously leading emerging markets equity business. Her appointment marks a formal upgrade of digital assets from experimental fringe to a core strategic focus at the firm.

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley plans to open crypto trading on its E*Trade platform in the first half of 2026, supporting BTC, ETH, and SOL initially, with registration applications already submitted for Bitcoin and Solana-related ETPs. The bank has also been aggressively recruiting senior engineers to build DeFi and RWA (Real World Asset) tokenization infrastructure, as well as a proprietary digital wallet expected to launch later this year.

JPMorgan Chase continues expanding its blockchain division Kinexys (formerly Onyx), with over 24 blockchain-related openings on Indeed and LinkedIn, including VP-level engineers, risk managers, and product managers. Notably, Kinexys global co-head Naveen Mallela left on February 11 after 11 years; whether this personnel change impacts the bank’s blockchain strategy remains to be seen.

Trends from Talent Competition

The common thread among these three banks’ hiring strategies is focus on tokenization and on-chain payments. Wells Fargo aims to tokenize deposits and enable programmable payments; Morgan Stanley is building RWA tokenization infrastructure; JPMorgan’s Kinexys focuses on on-chain settlement and institutional trading.

These are no longer experimental proof-of-concept projects but are directly tied to revenue-generating product lines. As the biggest three banks on Wall Street compete for similar talent, blockchain technology is shifting from a crypto “adjunct” to a foundational infrastructure for traditional finance.