Joshua Riezman, Chief Legal and Strategy Officer at GSR – Interview Series

Joshua Riezman is Chief Legal and Strategy Officer at GSR, a leading digital asset market maker and trading firm, and a Board Director of Lite Strategy, Inc (LITS ) . With nearly two decades of legal and financial services experience, he has advised global banks, fintechs, and crypto companies on regulatory strategy, compliance, and trading infrastructure across securities, derivatives, clearing, custody, and market structure. He began his career on the traditional finance side, holding senior legal roles at Deutsche Bank (DB ) and Société Générale (SGE.DE ) , where he counseled global financial institutions on trading, clearing, and custody. He later served as Assistant General Counsel at Circle, the issuer of USDC, focusing on product and regulatory matters spanning payments, digital currency, DeFi, and DAOs, before joining GSR. Riezman is a frequent commentator on crypto regulation, stablecoin legislation, and the maturing of digital asset capital markets.

GSR is a global leader in digital asset trading and one of crypto’s longest-standing capital markets partners, founded in 2013. Over more than a decade, the firm has built institutional-grade market making, OTC trading, and risk management services for token issuers, exchanges, financial institutions, payment companies, and asset managers, trading over $1 trillion in digital assets and providing liquidity across more than 250 tokens. GSR has evolved well beyond pure market making into a full-stack capital markets business spanning liquidity provision, venture investment in more than 100 companies and protocols, digital asset advisory, and asset management, including its GSR One platform and involvement in crypto treasury and ETF products. The firm holds regulatory approvals across major jurisdictions, including registration with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and a Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. In the Litecoin treasury initiative, GSR served as anchor investor and strategic partner, leading the $100 million private placement into Nasdaq-listed MEI Pharma – now Lite Strategy – to launch the first institutional Litecoin treasury strategy alongside Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, and continues to act as the company’s strategic advisor and digital asset treasury manager. 

You’ve worked at the intersection of traditional finance, crypto-native infrastructure, and public-company digital asset treasury strategy. How did your experience at firms like Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, Circle, and now GSR shape the way you think about bringing Litecoin and broader digital assets into institutional treasury management?

At Deutsche Bank and Société Générale, I focused on the plumbing of trading, clearing, and custody, all of which show that markets are only as effective as the infrastructure running underneath them. At Circle, I saw how digital assets operate at scale inside a regulated framework. My time at GSR has shaped my perspective on market structure from a liquidity lens. When putting all of those factors together,”crypto treasury” becomes a clear governance discipline that happens to use a digital asset. With Lite Strategy, the decision to use Litecoin as the underlying asset may be novel, but the treasury strategy standards a public company has to meet are not. 

Lite Strategy is positioning Litecoin as a primary reserve asset. From a governance and legal perspective, what needs to be in place before a public company can responsibly adopt a digital asset treasury strategy?

Before a public company holds a digital asset as a reserve, the board needs to be able to answer three things clearly. First, custody, determining who holds the keys, under what controls, and what happens operationally if a signer is unavailable. Second, valuation and disclosure, answering how the position is marked, how it is reported, and how you talk about volatility to shareholders without surprising them. Third, mandate, in terms of having a written treasury policy approved at the board level that says what you can buy, how much, and why, so the strategy is a governed program rather than a discretionary trade. It is the same rigor any treasurer applies to cash management, extended to a new asset class. 

Bitcoin treasury companies have received most of the market’s attention. What makes Litecoin distinct as a treasury asset, particularly when viewed through the lens of liquidity, settlement reliability, and long-term institutional use?

Litecoin has been active since 2011 with essentially uninterrupted uptime. It settles in roughly two and a half minutes, and it is listed and supported almost everywhere, which means deep, reliable liquidity when investors need to move sizable orders. For a treasurer, Litecoin provides proven reliability, predictable settlement, and liquidity you can easily access.

GSR is serving as both a strategic advisor and digital asset treasury manager in the Litecoin treasury initiative. What role does a market maker and liquidity provider play in helping a public company manage digital assets responsibly?

GSR provides execution that minimizes market impact when a public company builds or adjusts a position, because moving size clumsily is both a cost and a signaling problem. Beyond execution, GSR provides real-time liquidity intelligence, risk management, and the ability to support capital markets activity around the treasury rather than just parking an asset. For Lite Strategy, GSR served as an anchor investor and we have continued to be a strategic advisor and treasury manager. A liquidity provider that sits alongside the company sees the market the way a treasurer needs to see it, and that turns a static holding into a managed strategy.

You’ve advised on securities, derivatives, clearing, custody, DeFi, stablecoins, and global regulatory strategy. Which regulatory questions are most important for public companies considering exposure to crypto assets today?

The first question is classification and how the asset and any related activity are characterized under securities, commodities, and money transmission frameworks, because that determines almost everything downstream. The second is custody and the safeguarding rules that apply to how the asset is held. The third is disclosure. Public companies live and die on getting their reporting and their risk factors correct, and digital assets add valuation, volatility, and operational risk that have to be described honestly. The fourth, which boards underrate, is process. Being able to show a regulator the governance, the approvals, and the controls behind the decision. Regulators have generally been more comfortable with firms that can demonstrate discipline than with those chasing exposure.

How should boards evaluate the difference between holding digital assets as a passive balance-sheet reserve versus building an active treasury management strategy around those assets?

Holding an asset passively and managing it actively are two different risk profiles, and the board should decide which one it is signing up for. A passive reserve is a straightforward process where you buy, you custody, you disclose, and largely leave the asset alone. An active strategy, using the treasury to support capital markets operations or generate return, brings additional execution, counterparty, and governance considerations that need their own controls and board oversight. Companies can get themselves into trouble when drifting from one into the other without updating the mandate or the risk framework. 

Liquidity is often discussed in crypto, but not always understood by mainstream investors. What does healthy liquidity look like for a digital asset, and why does it matter for institutions, ETFs, exchanges, and public-company treasuries?

Healthy liquidity means investors can move a meaningful size in and out of an asset without materially moving the price, across multiple venues, in normal conditions and stressed ones. Depth matters more than headline trading volume, because volume can be thin or concentrated in ways that disappear when investors least need them to. For an institution, an ETF, an exchange, or a public-company treasury, healthy liquidity determines whether you can rebalance, meet a redemption, or exit a position on your terms rather than the market’s. It is also why the choice of asset matters so much for a treasury.

At Circle, you worked on product and regulatory legal issues around payments, digital currency, DeFi, and DAOs. How has the institutional conversation around crypto compliance changed since then?

Compliance teams were often in a defensive posture, and much of the work was educating people that a digital asset could live inside a regulated framework rather than outside one. That has shifted. The question in boardrooms now is how to engage responsibly, not whether to, and the frameworks have matured alongside it, from stablecoin legislation to clearer expectations around custody and disclosure.

Your background includes derivatives, clearing, prime brokerage, and market structure in traditional finance. Where do you see the biggest remaining gaps between crypto market infrastructure and traditional capital markets infrastructure?

The biggest remaining gaps are found in the parts of traditional markets that are invisible when they work. In traditional finance, there are mature clearing processes, settlement finality, prime brokerage, and custody arrangements that institutions have relied on for decades, along with the legal certainty that sits underneath them. Crypto has made progress, but the connective tissue is still maturing across standardized custody, credit and financing infrastructure, and the settlement and counterparty frameworks that let large institutions operate at scale without taking on operational risk they cannot measure. We’re building within this space at GSR. The gap is less about the technology and more about the institutional-grade infrastructure and the legal plumbing that make traditional markets dependable.

GSR has expanded from market making into a broader capital markets role, including advisory and strategic investment activity. What does a mature digital asset capital markets ecosystem look like over the next five years?

In five years, the digital asset capital markets ecosystem will have regulatory frameworks that are settled enough that a treasurer or a board can make decisions without guessing at the rules. You will see more public companies holding digital assets as a normal treasury option rather than a headline, and firms like GSR will be operating as full-service capital markets partners across liquidity, advisory, and investment. 

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit GSR or Lite Strategy.