David "Dave" LaValle is a financial executive with extensive experience in exchange-traded funds (ETFs), trading, and the digital asset industry. He has held senior leadership positions at prominent financial institutions including Nasdaq, State Street Global Advisors, VettaFi, and Grayscale Investments, and in September 2025 was appointed President of CoinDesk Indices and Data. ^[3]

Education

LaValle attended Georgetown University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on Pre-Med and Theology. ^[8]

Career

LaValle's career began in traditional finance with a focus on trading and market regulation before transitioning into leadership roles centered on exchange-traded products and, later, digital assets. He started in 1999 as a trader and trading assistant at Goin & Co. In 2002, he briefly worked at LaBranche & Co., where he was involved in equities trading and portfolio operations support. Later that year, he joined Kellogg Group, LLC as a senior trader. He was promoted to Director of Operations in 2005 and subsequently to Managing Director in 2006, a role in which he was responsible for overseeing the firm's trading operations, business development initiatives, and risk management protocols.

During his time at Kellogg Group, LaValle also held regulatory positions at major U.S. stock exchanges. From 2005 to 2008, he served as an exchange official at the American Stock Exchange, where he participated in regulatory and disciplinary committees. Following this, he was a floor official at the New York Stock Exchange from 2008 to 2010, contributing to regulatory oversight and dispute resolution on the trading floor.

In 2011, LaValle shifted his focus to exchange-traded products, joining Nasdaq as the Head of its Exchange Traded Product (ETP) Marketplace. In this capacity, which he held until 2014, he was responsible for the strategy, business development, and market structure innovation for ETPs on the exchange. Notably, it was during his tenure in 2014 that the Winklevoss brothers made their first attempt to list a bitcoin trust as an ETF. After his time at Nasdaq, LaValle joined State Street Global Advisors in 2014, where he served as the U.S. Head of ETF Capital Markets for nearly five years. In 2019, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of VettaFi, a global index and analytics firm, a position he held until 2021. ^[7]

CoinDesk

In September 2025, LaValle was named president of CoinDesk Indices and Data by its parent company, Bullish. He assumed responsibility for overseeing the firm’s index and data business, which includes widely used benchmarks such as the Bitcoin Price Index and the CoinDesk 20 Index, both of which are tracked by assets exceeding $40 billion. ^[1]

Panels

Bitcoin ETF

During a panel discussion at Consensus in September 2022 regarding the prospects of a spot Bitcoin ETF, industry experts addressed regulatory concerns that have been hindering approval. Panelists included LaValle, Damanick Dantes (Coindesk), Matt Hougan (Bitwise), and Lori Tiernan (Valkyrie Investments). They identified two main barriers: technical issues related to market manipulation and the regulators' political stance on the existence of a Bitcoin ETF. For years, the industry had engaged with the SEC, presenting extensive data to demonstrate the market's readiness and safety for such financial products, with optimism that the SEC would soon approve a Bitcoin ETF. Participants noted the evolving nature of demand among financial advisors, who increasingly sought efficient access to cryptocurrency for their clients. They discussed the educational efforts needed to bridge the gap in understanding this new asset class, alongside the anticipation that the eventual approval of a Bitcoin ETF would significantly impact market demand and investor access. Despite the challenges, there was a shared conviction that a spot Bitcoin ETF would eventually be realized, benefiting both investors and the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem. ^[2]