Coinsquare announces new team

The company introduces two new executives to the board of directors

Coinsquare, the Canadian crypto trading platform, has announced that it is working on the introduction of a new board of directors. The official press release revealed that two new executives named Nicholas Thadaney and Wendy Rudd will be joining the board. Both executives have backgrounds in regulated marketplaces, investment dealer operations and Canadian securities regulation.

The appointments of Thadaney and Rudd were made a little after Coinsquare confirmed that Lawrence Truong has become the new Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), Eric Richmond is the new Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Stacey Hosiak is the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

In summer of this year, the company agreed to replace its CEO and COO positions as part of a settlement deal that was struck with Ontario regulators. At this time, the Ontario Securities Commission stated that the exchange needed to implement “substantial corporate governance improvements. These include establishing independent boards of directors, appointing new CEOs and CCOs, creating an internal whistleblower program and implementing policies and procedures to monitor and assess compliance with Ontario securities law”.

In a statement, Hosiak reassured clients and regulators that the company is strictly adhering to the stipulated requirements.

“The measures we have taken are in strict adherence to regulatory requirements and demonstrate Coinsquare’s strengthened commitment to our clients, employees, shareholders and the digital asset community. Our goal is to create a customer-centric safe place for Canadians to trade digital assets”, she said.

In June of this year, Coinsquare announced that an internal theft carried out by a former employee in 2019 had given malicious parties access to the personal information of some of its customers. It was reported that the hacker or hackers planned on using the information, which contained email addresses, phone numbers and physical addresses to perform SIM swap attacks.

SIM swap attacks occur when a fraudulent actor uses personal information to hijack a person’s phone number.

The former CEO of Coinsquare, Cole Diamond, believes that the ex-employee stole the data from their customer relationship management (CRM) system in an attempt to tarnish the company’s reputation.

“Why else would a hacker contact a reporter, who would then tip off the company?” he pointed out.

Users who were affected by the hack have been contacted to change their account information and enable two-factor authentication. The company has also worked on its internal controls to ensure that employees cannot remove data from the CRM systems.