Former JP Morgan star is Britain’s cryptocurrency queen

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Former JP Morgan star is Britain’s cryptocurrency queen after making a £360m personal fortune

By Daily Mail City & Finance Reporter

Published: | Updated:

A British woman who created the credit default swap has emerged as one of the world’s richest cryptocurrency and blockchain tycoons.

Blythe Masters, formerly head of commodities at JP Morgan, was boss of Digital Asset Holdings, a start-up funded by some of the world’s largest banks, between 2015 and 2018.

The 51-year-old is still on the board of the company, which specialises in blockchain technology, which is a type of database.

Fortune: Blythe Masters, formerly head of commodities at JP Morgan, was boss of Digital Asset Holdings, a start-up funded by some of the world’s largest banks, between 2015 and 2018

She has amassed a personal fortune of £360million, according to research from online forum Traders of Crypto. 

It makes her the only Briton, and the only woman, in the top 25 richest cryptocurrency tycoons globally.

She was once labelled ‘the woman who invented financial weapons of mass destruction’, due to the role played by credit default swaps – a financial derivative or contract that allows an investor to ‘swap’ their credit risk with that of another investor – in the 2008 financial crisis.

Masters has defended the instruments saying ‘poor workmen tend to blame their tools’.

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