According to a press release sent on Thursday, Love will provide guidance in the development of proprietary blockchain language, advising Bitflyer on strategic and technology initiatives.

“This is someone who created a completely new programming language adopted by one of the largest tech companies in the world,” said Bitflyer CEO Yuzo Kano. “Tom is known for his pragmatic, metrics-based approach to architectural development, which he has used to deliver complex projects on time, spec and budget. His leadership will be an asset to Bitflyer, and we’re honoured to have him join as an advisor.”

Love started in the software business at General Electric Company, after which he held executive management positions at ITT, IBM and Morgan Stanley.

He was the first commercial user of Smalltalk-80 and the co-creator of Objective-C, a programming language used for the NeXT computer and later used extensively by Apple for the OS X and iOS operating systems and a wide variety of applications.

“There will be a plethora of innovations and disruptions in this space in the next few months and years. I look forward to working with Bitflyer in what will be a milestone year ahead,” Love said in the announcement.

Bitflyer launched in Europe in January 2018, having been granted a payment institution licence in Luxembourg, making it the only virtual currency exchange to be licensed in Europe, Japan and the US combined.