Talent moves before capital does.

This is because the people closest to a market see what's coming before it's priced in. Before press releases, or funding rounds.

The clearest example of this right now is AI.

When Sam Altman left Y Combinator president, one of the most prestigious jobs in Silicon Valley to go all in on Open AI it was a signal. 

Likewise, when the Stripe CTO left for Anthropic, there was no story to write. The valuation wasn't there. But what looked like an unusual personal decision was a signal. Then another. Then another.

Now Anthropic has pulled 8 senior hires from Stripe alone. 13 C-suite and Head-level moves in total. Senior operators were slowly, then all at once betting their careers on where value was going before the market did. 18 months later, Anthropic is valued at $180 billion. The capital followed the people.

I spend my working life watching for the same signal - in a different market.

3 months ago, a compliance lead at a Tier 1 bank asked me what serious digital asset firms were paying for someone at her level. She wasn't looking, but that was the point.

The most significant talent flows I've seen in 15 years of working in this market are happening right now. 

And like the moves to Anthropic… most people aren't paying attention yet. Here is what I'm seeing.

BlackRock's BUIDL fund crossed $2.5 billion in AUM faster than any fund in the firm's history. Circle filed for an IPO. JPMorgan's Kinexys processed over $1.5 trillion in transactions last year. Citi, Goldman, and Franklin Templeton all have live tokenisation products.

This is not a pipeline of future investment. It is capital that has already moved - into the regulated digital asset infrastructure that the talent flows were pointing toward two years ago.

The sequence is the same as AI.

The operators moved first —> builders followed —> Now the capital is arriving.

Which means the question worth asking is not where the capital went. It is where the talent is moving now.

Until recently, senior compliance and risk professionals were hired from TradFi at a discount. The pitch was equity upside, interesting problems, and the chance to build something from scratch. The comp was below what they could earn at a major bank. 

Now, the same professionals are being offered more than their banks were paying them to move from TradFi into digital asset firms.

Three years ago these firms had 5 people in compliance. Now some have 50! The firms building serious compliance functions now are positioning for the institutional mandates that require it.

In the last six months, three engineers I would have called first for a senior on-chain role have gone to AI labs.

The AI labs are recruiting aggressively into the same technical pool. They have the capital to make offers that digital asset firms are struggling to match. 

Digital asset firms are now competing on two fronts - against each other, and against the all consuming AI labs.

As the talent pool contracts this fast, what does your hiring strategy look like if you wait?

A few years ago, a senior rates trader leaving Deutsche Bank for a digital asset market maker would have raised eyebrows. Now, this is par for the course. 

Two years running a trading desk at a serious digital asset firm gives you an edge a bank career never would. This builds the right track record that firms entering the market now need. Plus, there’s a substantially higher performance-based compensation upside compared to legacy banks. 

In April, JPMorgan named a former Goldman executive to lead Kinexys, its blockchain division. Jamie Dimon's shareholder letter this year named blockchain-based competitors as a direct threat across payments, trading, and asset management.

Banks now need people who can operate at the intersection of institutional finance and digital infrastructure.

Every major bank is doing some version of this - which means they are now recruiting from the same pool as the digital asset firms. The flow that used to move in one direction is now moving in both.

The supply of people who understand both sides of this market - institutional finance and digital asset infrastructure - is finite and shrinking.

AI is competing for the technical layer. Banks are competing for crossover talent… and now, the MiCA deadline is concentrating compliance hiring into a narrow window.

The firms that win the next hiring cycle are not the ones that move fastest when a role becomes urgent. In a market this small, the relationship with the right candidate has to exist before the search starts.

That’s where Spearpoint sits. If you're planning a senior hire in the next six months, it's worth a conversation now.