Three senior executives at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platform, recently decided to leave their positions. Changpeng Zhao, the excahnge’s CEO, responded to the rumours by saying that the departures were part of normal staff turnover and that new people had been recruited to replace them.
Binance suffers 3 senior executive departures
Fortune has revealed that 3 senior executives at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, have decided to leave their positions.
In the same week, Hon Ng (Binance’s general counsel), Patrick Hillmann (head of strategy) and Steven Christie (head of compliance) announced their intention to leave Binance, shortly after Matthew Price, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent hired by the exchange, packed his bags. Price had initially been hired to oversee investigations and intelligence surrounding Binance.
Following publication of the Fortune article, Changpeng Zhao said that a new general counsel had been in place at Binance for a month and that Noah Perlman, the exchange’s compliance director, was still in place. In addition, Binance’s CEO said that Patrick Hillmann had decided to leave for personal reasons and not because of the regulatory constraints facing Binance, which he confirmed on Twitter.
Initially, Fortune had learned of the information – which had not been publicly disclosed until now – from people close to Binance, who then claimed that the 3 departures in question had been motivated by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into the exchange.
Simple turnover?
As usual, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, reacted to the news, which quickly spread on social networks with his now inescapable “4”, assuring that this was once again just FUD, and that new people were already in place in the positions concerned:
4. More FUD about some departures. Yes, there is turnover (at every company). But the reasons dreamed up by the “news” are completely wrong.
As an organization that has grown from 30 to 8000 people in 6 years, from 0 to the world’s largest crypto exchange in less than 5 months…
– CZ Binance (@cz_binance) July 6, 2023
Yes, there are departures (in all companies). But the reasons given by the “news” are completely wrong. […] As markets and the global crypto environment change, as our organisation evolves, and as personal situations change, there is turnover in every company. We thank all our former team members for their contribution to our growth and wish them all the best. We also congratulate the members of our team who have moved on to these new roles. They are all of the highest calibre.
According to a Bloomberg report, some Binance.US employees were asked to move following regulatory problems surrounding the exchange in mid-June. Those who refused were fired.
In the last 6 months alone, Binance has been placed under investigation in the United States, Canada, France, Australia and Belgium. Despite all this, Binance has had a positive inflow of $2 billion on its platform over the last 24 hours.
