Crypto's $2 Trillion Wipeout Is Coming for the C-Suite

tech.hindustantimes.com:

The convulsions that set the cryptocurrency market tumbling earlier this year and delivered shock waves through the industry have subsided. Now comes the shakeup in the C-suite.

More than two dozen high-ranking executives — from Alex Mashinsky, the charismatic and controversial co-founder of now-bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network to Brett Harrison of digital-asset exchange FTX US and Jesse Powell, the outspoken head of FTX's rival Kraken — have vacated their posts in the past two months alone.

While an assortment of idiosyncratic reasons has been given for the exodus, it's clear the turbulence that shook the market starting in the spring has taken a toll. It would be hard for it not to, after $2 trillion worth of crypto evaporated in the rout. Yet market observers also see another common thread: The combination of a larger presence of institutional investors, heightened regulatory scrutiny and tighter purse strings at venture-capital firms is causing a reassessment of the type of management needed for the next phase of crypto. The recent calm that has settled over the market may itself herald a transition, some say, as traditional finance takes a bigger stake.

Gone are some of the founders famous for bombastic personalities and social-media feuds with competitors and skeptics — replaced, in some cases, by a more buttoned-up style of executive from the world of traditional finance. Mashinsky, for example, was replaced on an interim basis during Celsius' bankruptcy proceedings by Chris Ferraro, whose resume includes 18 years at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

“In down markets, people restructure management for a bunch of reasons, one definitely being that the business and industry has matured and they are putting in a new