Last month, Shahla Ali stepped into the role of chief legal officer and chief compliance officer at BitGo, a blockchain software company that secures digital currency for institutional investors. As a newcomer, she has found the industry’s relationship with regulators to be similar to some of her past jobs in an industry that’s quite different from crypto. 

Ali, who serves as BitGo’s first in-house lawyer, wasn’t a cryptocurrency expert or enthusiast before joining the Palo Alto, California-based company, so she’s still up against a pretty steep learning curve, she told Corporate Counsel in a phone interview last week.