Head of DeFi in Europe and Head of Decentralized Finance in Germany

What a Head of DeFi does

A Head of DeFi, or Head of Decentralized Finance, decides which DeFi services a company offers and with which partners, and leads the team that builds and runs them. I held this position from January 2022 at the Frankfurt-based company Blocksize Capital, under the title Head of Decentralized Finance and Node Operations, and became its Chief Information Officer in January 2023.

What Head of DeFi job ads ask for, matched to my work

I read Head of DeFi job ads of crypto companies in September 2026. The left column sums up what they ask for, the right column names what I did.

The job ads ask for	What I did
A DeFi strategy and its execution	As CIO from January 2023, carried the product vision through to the launch of financial products
A link between the technical team and external partners	Coordinated development, infrastructure, product and sales, and spoke with decision-makers at stock exchanges and banks
MVPs defined with product and tech teams	Wrote the concept of a real-time market data product in summer 2022 and led its rollout
A network of partners	Designed agreements with an oracle network, a crypto exchange, banks and stock exchanges in 2023
Knowledge of the DeFi ecosystem	Nodes in an oracle network for protocols such as Ethereum and Avalanche; Certified DeFi Expert in 2022
Experience in traditional finance and in crypto	Life insurance portals at Policen Direkt, then crypto market data that customers from the banking sector use
A voice in the industry	Product Advisory Committee of the Digital Token Identifier Foundation from May 2024; editor for digital assets at Business Punk from January 2026
Building a team	Built the node operations team in 2022; disciplinary responsibility for business-critical teams as CIO

My DeFi work, newest first

• Since January 2026: Editor at the business magazine Business Punk, writing on digital assets, blockchains and crypto investing.
• May 2024: expert member of the Product Advisory Committee of the Digital Token Identifier Foundation, the registration authority for ISO 24165.
• January 2023 to October 2024: Chief Information Officer at Blocksize Capital, with procuration from May 2023. In 2023 I worked on the terms, the price definitions, the market data manifest and the API methodologies of the data product, and I supported the launch of the oracle service.
• January to December 2022: Head of Decentralized Finance and Node Operations. I took over the operation and the documentation of the oracle price data network, built the node operations team and created the market data product with colleagues in summer 2022.
• Since 2015: Bitcoin miners and blockchain nodes of my own. I’m still running nodes today.

The Frankfurt DeFi community

In 2022 I started the Frankfurt Blockchain Meetup with three colleagues from Frankfurt, a series of events on blockchain and decentralized finance with talks by Blockdaemon, SOLA-X and DZ Bank in its first year. The series grew into Finance Loop, a community I co-founded and launched in January 2025. Finance Loop connects traditional finance, blockchains and regulation, held more than 16 events in 2025 and has worked with Frankfurt Main Finance, Chainlink and OKX Institutional. It has more than 4,000 members. A DeFi team that hires me can meet partners and speakers there.

Profile at a glance

Role	Head of DeFi, Head of Decentralized Finance, Head of Node Operations
Engagement	Permanent, remote for the most part, on-site days in Frankfurt Rhine-Main; interim
Location	Frankfurt, Germany; remote for companies across Europe
Protocols	Chainlink oracle nodes; Ethereum and Avalanche; Bitcoin
Certificates	Certified DeFi Expert, Certified Bitcoin Professional, AWS Solutions Architect Associate
Languages	German, English

Who I am

I am Michael Wutzke. I have worked in IT and media for more than twenty years, as an employee and as a consultant. Blockchains came into my work through my own blockchain nodes, which I have run since 2015, and the DeFi boom turned them into my job in January 2022. I build software with Claude and Codex and am interested in open-source AI models that a company runs on its own servers. The tasks of that job are listed on Head of Decentralized Finance and Node Operations.