As the crypto winter heightened in June, bitcoin mining facilitating and brokerage services firm Compass Mining (CMP) lost two of its top leaders. President Whit Gibbs and CFO Jodie Fisher resigned around the same time because of different setbacks and frustrations inside the organization.
That very month, Binance Labs, the venture arm of the world’s driving crypto trade Binance, lost its chief when Bill Qian presented his resignation few weeks after the company’s executive director chief Nicole Zhang left the firm.
On July 1, Peng Zhong, the President of Ignite, the development firm behind the Cosmos blockchain, reported his exit. The resignation came a couple of months after the organization rebranded from Tendermint to Ignite as a component of its rebuilding plan. As indicated by reports, other top executives at Ignite left the firm after Zhong’s unexpected exit.
In the last week of July, G. Steven Kokinos, the President of blockchain Company Algorand, stepped down subsequent to spending almost four years at the firm. In spite of his exit, Kokinos will keep on exhorting or advising Algorand until the following year.
August started with a big bang as Bitcoin proponent Michael Saylor announced that he resigned from his role as CEO of MicroStrategy after serving as executive officer for over three decades. Nonetheless, Saylor’s resignation as CEO allows him to focus on the firm’s Bitcoin strategy.
During his time as CEO, Saylor led MicroStrategy in investing in Bitcoin. Today, the company holds 130,000 BTC bought for $3.98 billion, topping the list of publicly traded entities with Bitcoin investments.
Still in August, Michael Moro exited his position as CEO of Genesis after the crypto brokerage firm slashed 20% of its workforce to cut costs amid the bear market.
Shortly after, Alameda Research, the principal trading firm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX, lost its co-CEO after Sam Trabucco resigned from the company to focus on personal matters.
On September 21, Kraken’s founder Jesse Powell joined the list of crypto executives stepping down from their position. He served the crypto exchange for over a decade and will continue to do so as board chairman.
Shortly after, FTX US President Brett Harrison and Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky followed in Powell’s footsteps, leaving their positions at their respective firms.
Sharing the news on Twitter, Harrison noted that he would be moving to an Advisory role to continue his service for the exchange.
The outgoing president, who has worked for the firm for more than 18 months, said he helped transform FTX US from a three-person team to a workforce of more than 100 dedicated employees from tech, business development, legal, and customer service.
On the other hand, Mashinsky’s departure came a couple of months after Celsius filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection at the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York due to a severe liquidity crunch during the Terra fiasco.
Shortly after Mashinsky stepped down from his role at Celsius, reports emerged that his resignation might have stemmed from pressure from the company’s creditors.
According to a recent court filing, the creditors represented by the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (UCC) had requested the Special Committee of Celsius Network to remove its CEO and take other necessary precautions to ensure the smooth restructuring of the firm.
The UCC noted that after reviewing the information presented by Mashinsky in “furtherance of the Committee’s investigation,” it would be unacceptable to allow him to continue as CEO.
Meanwhile, it is unclear which top crypto executives will step down next, but it would be interesting to see how long this trend will continue.
