What's Driving Crypto's C-Suite 'Great Resignation'?

be correct. This crypto winter has seen a string of high profile exits from the c suite, a mix of resignations and other forms of well to coin a phrase conscious and coupling. What's driving all of this activity? Is it Bitcoin prices falling more than is that the bankruptcy filings? Is it the SEC breathing down everyone's neck? Is it the wanting to spend more time with your yacht in

the Bahamas? Maybe it's all of these at once. For more on this succession level crypto drama, we've got Bloomberg report to U. H. Young antipoly Vias, executive search recruiter at Global Consulting, firm. Corn Ferry very excited to have you both on the show. So that's all going on. I feel like I thought, basically every episode of this

podcast with there's a lot going to own. It's always true, but today, more specifically, we're going to talk about the fact that, you know, roughly a dozen or more folks in C suite executive management, senior leadership positions at some of the largest crypto companies in the world have in recent days found themselves either out of a job or in a different job from what they were doing before.

Industry turmoil happens, company upheaval happens. You know, we'll talk to folks and they'll say, oh, yeah, totally, this person just wanted to spend more time with their family. There's

always a narrative around these things. What we're going to dive into a little bit is why we're seeing this right now in crypto, what might be coming next, and what our listeners need to understand about corporate succession and you asually, I'm going to start with you, could you just remind folks how many people have switched the jobs in the past couple of months in crypto. That's going to be a long league. What are some of the

biggest names. We'll start with Michael Saylor, who let macro Strategy, which is the company that's been buying big Coin. And then we also have Crack and CEO Jesse Pals stepping down as he was the co founder of the crypto Exchange. And then we have a leadership shuffle at Genesis, one of the biggest institutional crypto brokerage, which was the biggest creditor for Three Arrows cryptal hedge fund that went bankrupt. So we've seen a series of changes, I would say,

starting as early as August this year. As you say, U G, that is a fairly long list of people, and some of those folks, you know what they've telegraphed is this is expected. I've been doing this for a long time. I'm really interested in these other opportunities. For some of them, it came as kind of more of a surprise to the market. Are there any common trends or themes like, are there particular signs that this company was about to go through some kind of leadership of people.

I would place all these changes in the broader context of what the cryptal industry has been sued in the past. Several months. As we know, ever since the collapse of cryptal prices, there has been a series of shakeout. We've seeing layoffs at big cryptal companies. There has been companies that fell for bankruptcies, there's been consolidations and bailouts, and now we're entering a stage where some of these companies are starting to change their top leaders, including the CEOs.

And I would say that the cryptal industry is fairly news about ten years old. So a lot of these CEOs that are being replaced are actually the original founders of the crypto companies, and they are oftentimes closely associated with the brand name of the company, and they're able to amass lots of followings online and their household names.

But now they're starting to be replaced by professional managers whose names are less familiar to folks in the cryptal communities, but who have background in traditional professional services firms and the Probably I wanna get your perspective on this, because I feel like we've seen this in finance, We've seen

this in tech. You know, boy jenior ceo company grows to ten thousands, Suddenly like wow, this is really hard managing all these people's less fun we're gonna switch over, or there's some kind of corporate crisis, or as you directly points out, a an industry wide crisis from your perspective, as anything about what was happening in crypto unusual or different in any way. I think there's two answers to

that question. I think there's a yes and a no. I'll start with the no, in that any disruptive industry or any disruptive technology has its early adopters, and there's an education process that the industry has to go through in order to adopt it. And so we've seen that in tech and like you said, a wonder cand and you know, these these geniuses, there is that element of it.

The yes part of the unusual nous is that this is such a novel concept, but it's baked an ideology as well, right, and so they want to actually reimagine the way money is distributed with etcetera, and even the creation of a currency. I would you know, draw some parallels to when you know, the euro was introduced in the market. And I was actually there at the London School of Economics at the time and when they introduced this concept. As a student, I was like, this is

never gonna think what is this? This is never gonna happen. What what are you guys talking about? And there was an adoption or an adoption process, and so I think with the crypto space there is some big uniqueness from sort of a you know, reimagining the financial system with this, and that's where you're going to get a lot of

different perspectives. It's so interesting to hear you identify the kind of the ideology that's wrapped open crypto because that has absolutely manifested in the shall we say, some of the larger personalities at at play here, and you know, cracking and coin base and a couple of other folks have had their CEOs kind of go on the record saying if you're not down for this cause, if you are like one of those quotes unquote wokes out there, like we're not interested in what you have to say

about any of these things, like don't bring politics to work, or let's ask questions about whether women can be people.

You know. So that's such a specific way of running a company, and I wonder how that squares with what you AI is identifying of bringing in this class of like professional managers who are much less likely to be wanting to write incendiary blog posts about who counsel as a person as you, And she said, there's a lot of founder lead and founder first firms out there which they have become their own brand and personal brand in the crypto space, and as any industry, the maturation of

that industry requires a lot of institutional knowledge, which is why you're now seeing this new wave of leadership step in. Because have we gone through a crypto winter? Yes? Have we gone through crypto winters? Yes? Have we gone through really extreme market volatility? Yes? Has the regulatory bodies that started to take a look at this yes. Think about when the iPod first came out. When the iPod first

came out, people are like, what are you talking about? Like, I mean, you're gonna have you know, five thousand songs in this little device, And the early adopters really geeked out about it. And so the early adopters of crypto really geeked out about it because of those personalities, because of those guys that they were and yes, they wrote a lot of them were guys that came out and said, you know, this is the next way of the financial world.

Let's democratize access and let's figure out what those pain points are in the industry and completely obliterate everything. And I think ideally everyone can understand that this is great, but the implementation of it is so hard, and I think that's what these guys are running up against. And that's exactly why you're going to see the succession around leaders that have said, I've taken a really hard concept in this, you know, age old industry, and how am

I going to execute it and implement this? And you're going to need that institutional knowledge. You're going to have to have them navigate through the system because those guys that are just sitting on the other side of the house saying this is what is ideal. That's great, but you have to get the others to adopt to it.

That's probably given that this is literally your job, right It is like identifying that pool of talent, but also helping organizations who are going through these kinds of transitions define who they want that could take on that change of strategy, Like what does that like look like in practice? Is this a short process? Is this a loan process? Like who gets involved? Depending on the stage which you know these companies are in trouble or you know, there's

some event that has happened. And I think I might have mentioned this, uh before, is that you know, there needs to be an adult in the room that's kind of been there, done that, seen it and can tell the story again. And so you know, oftentimes those individual alls are parachuted in quite quickly together with the leadership team and the board working in lockstep. Other times, you know you're going to see what you're kind of seeing in some of the executives that might have come in

is what we generally call organ rejection. Right, So they've come in and they've had really good intentions and you know they've just brought in a different perspective, but the culture itself or management or however things are working on the inside just basically rejected them. And so while all intentions were good, it just might not have worked out

from that perspective. And sometimes the culture piece does run very deep, depending on the organization, and so you can get immediate sort of organ rejection and you'll see people out of there within six months to a year. Colorful phrase, I'm definitely I'm gonna have to work this since at the title of the episodes on How Up Next, you'll hear more on how the Crypto ceo reshuffle could change the entire landscape of the industry with Bloomberg Reports, uh

G Young and executive recruiter deepoly Vas. Broadly speaking, I, at least other than the financial crisis, I can't remember witnessing an industry where they have been like so many very senior leadership transitions like this in such a short amount of time. Right, it would be like, if you know, Bezos and Zuckerberg and Tim Cook, We're all like Tuesday, let's do Tuesday, and they all just quit. Like That's what it sort of felt like in Crypto. What is

like the collective effect on the talent pool? Are there people out there who are still lining up and being like that seems like a really good idea for a job transition. I'm going to run one of those companies. Or does that make it more challenging to replace these folks? I think it's challenging in general. Right, So you have one side of the market that is looking for extreme entrepreneurial opportunities, extreme challenges. They want to roll up their sleeves,

they want to get in there. And then the type of talent that these crypto companies originally wanted to attract was this institutional knowledge that can convert themselves to a more entrepreneurial mindset and come in there and help them build something great. So that part of the market has certainly, you know, taken some pause and say, while I was super interested, I bought into the story, I might hit the pause button because where I am I'm safe and do I want to take on this risk in my

career at this time and in this particular industry. And this is mainly due to the macro economic conditions. Right, are we going into a recession? You know, is crypto taking an even deeper dive? You know, there's massive consolidation. Do I want to work for a company that's going to because solidated and then I'll be layered or I might be out of there. So there's so many different

considerations that are going on. I think this shakeout has to kind of taper off or level off at some point, and that will only be done as soon as we know what is the FED doing, you know, whereas inflation? What are other parts of the globe doing around the industry? Right, what's happening in Asia, what's happening in Europe. And then lastly the regulatory environment. Where do the regulatory body see us as a digital asset and how are they going to deal with us now and in the future and

what sort of lined up? And then how are the banks and other institutions and institutional investors going to treat us positively or negatively? Time will tell. Those questions are so hard. You're You're like, what is the fact going to do? What's gonna happen with regulations? I could understand why somebody might be like, I'm just gonna set this one out, I'm gonna be okay, But actually you actually I want to come back to you, and then deeply

I'm gonna ask you the same question. Are there certain types of industries that the folks in crypto have been trying to recruit from? So you age you've written about the fact that there was like for a while, the sort of revolving door of trad fi to defy, defy and the other parts of crypto, And now it's like, I might go back to my relatively chill investment banking job. How do you think that ship shaking out? Well, it wasn't.

Banking jobs are not exactly chill but it is a different, very different wife from what you get at the crypto firm. We are still occasionally writing about news of people who are leaving big washway firms and joining crypto. This morning, we just wrote about MPT at Goldman SAX who's joining

Quin based Institutionals for their derivative's effort. So these changes are still happening, but I feel like, just based on our observation, is less often as I would say the latter part of last year when the market was still going strong. And I would also note that a lot of these replacement of top leaders often come within the

company or at least within the cryptal communities. It seems that they're the ones who already know the company inside out and therefore they have an understanding of how things work, what are the key issues here? And then oftentimes, with short notice, if you have to change your leaders, some of these companies will look within themselves to find the

next leader. And probably how common is that right where it's like a company is going through crisis and they're like, actually, Jim, who's been here all along, it's gonna be it's going to be the new person in charge all the time, all the time and I and it's almost as if they need to rely on sort of that safe, steady pair of hands that have actually seen the story play out and they just didn't have the opportunity to jump

in in. But because they have all of the bird's eye view or the front row seat right to what has happened, that they would be an ideal candidate to kind of step in. When you think about people going back to those investment banking jobs, those jobs are also sort of drying up in these specific market conditions, right like there's less deal flow. Goldman Sacks and other big banks have come out with potential layoffs and hiring freezes, etcetera.

And so that's again just based on market conditions. So I would say that for me, if I was just sort of predicting future of work for those gyms that are sitting in those seats right now that want to take on something, I'm going to go out on the limb and say, for those companies that we're keeping a close eye on crypto, and I'm particularly talking about the banks and funds and others, this may be an ideal

time for them to build something in house. Right, this is the time to say all right, there's talent on the street, there's consolidation. What can we do to set ourselves up for when crypto makes a re emergence after this winter? And they would be smart to do so. Final question, you are a person who was running a company. You spent a lot of really quality time on your yacht. Now you're like, I want to you know, like, there's only so many beautiful beaches I can spend time on.

I want to go back and get my hands dirty again, but not necessarily in either you know, trad fire Wall Street or back into crypto. What from your perspective as a recruiter, like, where would you expect to see some of those folks popping up? I think the next trend is going to be sort of platform as a service

and data as a service. I think that those individuals that have been in any part of the tech, financial services, data, crypto, blockchain ecosystem, it's all gonna be kind of in and around there, right, So for those yacht goers that want to dip back in, they're huge opportunities in these data related companies. Right at the end of the day, that's the data is going to be king amazing. Well, I feel like I learned some things. I feel like this is one of those episodes we should post on LinkedIn.

I feel like, did you recently buy a yacht? Like? Listen to the Scrypto episode. Well, thank you both, so so much. What a pleasure to have you on the show. You can find more of you. H Young is reporting on the Bloomberg terminal, on Bloomberg dot com and on Twitter. She's at you underscore Young, that's why you e Q I underscore y e n G on the next episode of Bloomberg Crypto. Of all of the regulatory priorities in the world, why is finding Kim Kardashian one point two

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