FTX.US President Brett Harrison Resigns
Brett Harrison, the president of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.US, announced on Tuesday via Twitter social media that he is stepping down from his role but will remain with the exchange in an advisory capacity.
“Over the next few months, I will be transitioning my responsibilities and moving into an advisory role with the company,” Harrison wrote on the popular social media platform.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Harrison assumed the role of president of FTX.US last May. But now he’s leaving at a time when the crypto exchange is acting as a “white knight rescue” for struggling crypto firms, amid a market downturn that sped up 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 between the arrival of larger market players and the increasing fragmentation and technological complexity of the market landscape,” Harrison wrote on social media. media.
While Harrison did not say what he plans to do next, he stated 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. Prior to that, he served as Head of Trading Systems Technology at investment firm Jane Street for 7 1/2 years.
Is the ongoing financial crisis the reason managers are leaving?
Harrison’s departure is one of many other recent high-profile layoffs that comes at a time when the crypto market shakeout cost thousands of job losses and set off a round of consolidations.
A series of successions is facilitating a change of guard in the just over ten-year-old industry. Many of crypto’s most prominent leaders, such as Michael Saylor, Jesse Powell, are technologists who discovered digital assets early, cultivated large followings, and did not hesitate to express their beliefs online.
The wave of changes began in early August when Saylor, who founded MicroStrategy in 1989, announced his departure as the company’s longtime CEO to focus more on Bitcoin. Two weeks later, the CEO of troubled crypto broker Genesis, Michael Moro, resigned.
On August 24, Sam Trabucco, co-CEO of Alameda Research – the trading firm founded by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried – announced that he was stepping down to “prioritize other things”.
Last week on September 21, crypto exchange Kraken announced that its co-founder Jesse Powell will step down as CEO and be replaced by Chief Operating Officer David Ripley. And yesterday, CEO of bankrupt crypto-lending firm Celsius Network, Alex Mashinsky, also announced his resignation.
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