en
Back to the list

Block Hires Kristy-Leigh Minehan as Chief Product Officer

source-logo  cryptobriefing.com 04 June 2022 00:38, UTC

Block, Inc. has hired world-renowned blockchain technology and cryptocurrency mining expert Kristy-Leigh Minehan as its new Chief Product Officer.

A Crypto OG

Kristy-Leigh Minehan is joining Block, Inc. as its new Chief Product Officer.

Minehan will be tasked with building out Block’s cryptocurrency mining products, including Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners. 

ASIC miners are hardware devices specifically and single-mindedly designed to mine Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin; they provide more hashrate and are more energy-efficient than Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). 

Minehan has a rich history with crypto mining. Having entered the crypto space as early as 2010, she was Director of Technology at Genesis Mining and Chief Technology Officer for Core Scientific, and the founder of The Mineority Group as well. She has been serving as a Technical Advisor to both Valkyrie Funds and Merkle Standard. 

Minehan is also notorious for co-creating and advocating for ProgPow, a highly contentious proposed upgrade to the Ethereum network which would have seen GPU miners gain an advantage over ASIC rigs. 

Crypto Slate has said that “her work in the fields of semiconductor engineering, hardware acceleration, data center infrastructure, and system scalability have been recognized globally, with Minehan’s advice being regularly sought after by blockchain and artificial intelligence leaders.”

Block (formerly Square, Inc.) is a publicly-traded company founded by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. Previously a payments platform aimed to help small and medium businesses accept credit card payments, the company’s focus pivoted towards Bitcoin and blockchain technology last December. Dorsey has announced a plan to launch a Bitcoin hardware wallet. The company stock currently trades at $83.10.

cryptobriefing.com