Blockchain-based company Blockstream announced that its board of directors has appointed Dr. Adam Back, the company co-founder, as its new CEO.

According to the official announcement, Adam replaces outgoing CEO Austin Hill who opted out of the board recently to pursue other opportunities. Adam has been a renowned cryptographer and has over two decades of experience working in the fields including e-cash, digital currencies, distributed computing, privacy technology, among others. He has invented a proof-of-work system – Hashcash that is used to limit email spam and denial-of-service attacks, and more. It recently became known for its use in bitcoin and other digital currencies as a part of mining algorithm.

Adam is one of the authors of "Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains," and is a strong advocate for open source, decentralized technologies like bitcoin.

“I am honored to take on the CEO position and am excited about driving Blockstream to reach its full potential. We have a world-class and dedicated team building the foundations that will underpin the transformation of financial systems," Adam stated.

Being the co-founder of Blockstream, Adam previously held positions of President and COO. During his tenure, he focused on building a world-class team, contributed to the company's product and technical vision as well as oversaw operations of teams in ten countries. He also worked closely with the company’s customers and partners including PwC and GreenAddress.

Prior to Blockstream, Adam was a co-founder of Pi Corporation and also held senior positions in a number of companies including Microsoft, EMC, PI, VMware, among others. He also played the role of cryptography and e-cash advisor to various startups.

"Adam has extensive practical experience building teams and shipping products as shown by his track record at organizations large and small, such as Microsoft, PI, EMC, and VMware," said Paul Maritz, Chairman, Pivotal, and former CEO of VMware and senior executive with aforementioned companies. "This is on top of also having an extraordinarily deep technical background in all aspects of cryptography and being the inventor of Hashcash, one of the core concepts used in Bitcoin."