Alex Kriete, co-head of digital assets at Citi, announced his resignation from the banking giant after 11 years with the company on March 10 via LinkedIn. In his post, he stated that he intends to devote himself full-time to developing a new cryptocurrency company, but did not provide any further details at the time.
Kriete co-led the Digital Assets Group with Greg Girasole for less than a year since the unit went live in June 2021. Girasole also announced his departure via LinkedIn. and, together, he and Kriete they plan to start their own blockchain-related company. The two said they will share more details about it in the coming weeks.
Kriete’s enthusiasm for his new venture stemmed from a belief that digital assets “will continue to grow in importance for global capital markets and the formation of new business models.” She added that his personal interest in blockchain-enabled digital assets began more than five years ago and has now led him to want to “help mature this market” on his own terms.
While Kriete and Girasole oversaw the digital assets group within Citi’s wealth management division, the bank has another digital assets unit within its Institutional Clients Group that is led by the recently appointed Puneet Singhvi.
Recently, another Citi executive, Matt Zhang, also jumped ship to launch a $1.5 billion cryptocurrency fund called Hivemind Capital Partners, whose first tech partner is Algorand.. And in a similar corporate leadership move, a former Goldman Sachs executive, Roger Bartlett, decided it was “time to embrace the crypto economy” and left the bank to head Global Financial Operations at Coinbase.
Meanwhile, another bank pioneering the metaverse is JPMorgan Chase, which has opened a virtual room in the Decentraland metaverse in hopes of capitalizing on a $1 trillion market opportunity, according to the bank.
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