Sept 27 (Reuters) – Brett Harrison, president of FTX US,
is stepping down from his role but will stay on in an advisory
capacity at the cryptocurrency exchange, he wrote in a series of
tweets on Tuesday.
Harrison’s decision comes a month after one of his
now-deleted tweets caught the ire of the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
The U.S. regulator had said the July tweet contained
misleading claims that funds held at and stocks purchased
through FTX were FDIC insured, and ordered the company to remove
any misleading language from its social media accounts and
websites.
In response, chief executive officer Sam Bankman-Fried
emphasized FTX is not FDIC-insured, and apologized if anyone
misinterpreted previous comments.
Harrison, who took over the role in May last year, is moving
on at a time the cryptocurrency exchange is seen as the ‘white
knight’ of the beleaguered sector as it acquires assets,
technologies and customers of companies at cheap valuations in a
shaky digital assets sector.
“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 participants, and
the increasing fragmentation and technological complexity of the
market’s landscape,” he wrote on Twitter, adding he will remain
in the industry.
The cryptocurrency sector has been crippled due to an
industry wide sell-off after the collapse of major tokens
terraUSD and luna. Several firms including hedge fund Three
Arrows and crypto lenders Celsius and Voyager Digital filed for
bankruptcy, while Coinbase, BlockFi and Crypto.com laid
off thousands of employees.
(Reporting by Mehnaz Yasmin in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna
Chandra Eluri)