Walmart Director Joins Blockchain.com Board

Independent Walmart director Tom Horton has taken a similar role on the board of Blockchain.com, the Bitcoin exchange and wallet provider.

We’re excited to welcome Tom Horton to our board as Lead Independent Director.

His experience on corporate boards (Walmart, GE, Qualcomm) + scaling multinational businesses (American Airlines, AT&T) is unmatched and will help us scale worldwide. Welcome! https://t.co/FYadu9Fj5S

— Blockchain.com (@blockchain) January 24, 2022

“There is a massive shift underway in financial services and money, and being part of this is very interesting. What is being done here relates to things I involved in elsewhere,” Horton told Bloomberg.

Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith explained that the company is strengthening the board ahead of the planned IPO, which could occur in the near or medium term.

Horton sits on General Electric’s board. Previously he was chairman of American Airlines and a senior adviser at private equity firm Warburg Pincus, whose president is former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

In January, former head of consumer online banking at Morgan Stanley, Marcy Wu, also joined Blockchain.com’s board.

Among the company’s investors are Google Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures and billionaire Richard Branson. Blockchain.com has raised $537 million in total, and, following the previous funding round, its valuation stood at $5.2 billion.

According to Smith, over the last 12 months the company reached 37 million consumer users, and institutional trading and lending volumes exceeded $10 billion.

In 2021 Blockchain.com acquired four companies, moved its headquarters to Miami and began expansion into Latin America, with staff rising from 200 to 550, he added.

“This is a multinational and growing company. Where I can help is in its further development,” Horton said.

In March 2021, former Obama White House aide Jim Messina joined Blockchain.com’s board.