Bitcoin startups lure quant whizzes from Wall Street

All that glitters: Bitcoin startups are luring the best and brightest from Wall Street with the promise of lucrative rewards. Photo: Reuters

NEW YORK: Armed with a doctorate in financial engineering, 34-year-old Timo Schlaefer was on his way to a promising career at Goldman Sachs in London. Previously with the bank's mergers and acquisitions team, he became an executive director of credit quantitative modelling at Goldman, where quants like Schlaefer are highly valued. 

In February he gave that up, and launched a company called Crypto Facilities Ltd, a Bitcoin derivatives trading platform, which now has six employees. For now, the platform trades Bitcoin forwards, which are directly linked to the price of Bitcoin, but it's also developing other digital currency derivative products.