Former Signature Bank Crypto Payments Chief, 4 of His Team Join Fortress Trust

Joseph Seibert, formerly head of digital assets at Signature Bank, and four members of his Signet payments team have joined Fortress Trust, the Nevada-based chartered trust company with a focus on cryptocurrency and Web3.

Signature Bank was shut down in March after depositors withdrew large sums of money following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The popular Signet real-time payments platform, which Seibert oversaw, was launched in early 2019 and later integrated with digital asset custodian Fireblocks in 2020.

Seibert, who is now managing director of the Fortress digital assets business, is working with part of the Signature Bank risk and compliance team and crypto payments specialists, to help exchanges, over-the-counter (OTC) desks and others in the industry solve their post-Signature/Silvergate fiat settlement at Fortress, he told CoinDesk.

“Myself and four members of my digital assets team at Signature Bank are happy to announce we have found a new home at Fortress Trust,” Seibert said. “For now, it’s part of the risk and compliance team as well as a blockchain payments guru. I intend to add more people from Signature’s operations team and some salespeople in due course.”

Fortress Trust, a regulated trust company with 22 money transmitter licenses, was formed by Scott Purcell, who previously oversaw digital asset innovation at Nevada-based Prime Trust.