Brett Harrison, the chairman of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.US, announced via social media Twitter on Tuesday that he was stepping down from his role but would remain on the exchange in an advisory capacity.
“Over the next few months, I will be transitioning my responsibilities and into an advisory role within the company,” Harrison said on the popular social media platform.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Harrison took over as chairman of FTX.US in May last year. But now he leaves at a time when the crypto exchange is acting as a “white knight rescue” for struggling crypto businesses amid a market downturn that has plunged most trading activity.
“This industry is at a number of crossroads. The one that matters most to me, as a financial technologist, is the intersection of the arrival of larger market players and the increasing fragmentation and technological complexity of the market landscape,” Harrison wrote on social media. media.
Although Harrison did not say what he plans to do next, he said that “I remain in the industry with the goal of removing technological barriers to the full participation and maturation of global crypto markets. , both centralized and decentralized”.
Prior to joining FTX.US, Harrison worked for nearly two years at market maker Citadel Securities. Previously, he was Head of Trading Systems Technology at investment firm Jane Street for 7½ years.
Is the current financial crisis the cause of the departure of executives?
Harrison’s departure is one of several other high-profile recent resignations that come at a time when the upheaval in the crypto market has cost thousands of job losses and triggered a series of consolidations.
A series of successions are setting the stage for a changing of the guard in the roughly decade-old industry. Many of crypto’s most prominent leaders, such as Michael Saylor, Jesse Powell, are technologists who discovered digital assets early on, cultivated big followings, and weren’t shy about expressing what they believe online. .
The wave of change began in early August with Saylor, who founded MicroStrategy in 1989, announcing his resignation as the company’s longtime CEO to focus more on Bitcoin. Two weeks later, the CEO of struggling crypto broker Genesis, Michael Moro, resigned.
On August 24, Sam Trabucco, the co-CEO of Alameda Research – the trading company founded by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, announced his resignation to “put other things first.”
Last week, on September 21, crypto exchange Kraken announced that its co-founder Jesse Powell would step down as CEO and be replaced by COO David Ripley. And yesterday the CEO of bankrupt credit company Celsius Network, Alex Mashinsky, also announced his resignation.
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