(Bloomberg) — BitMex said Chief Executive Officer Alexander Hoeptner has left after less than two years at the pioneering cryptocurrency exchange, joining the list of recent executive departures in the embattled industry.
(Bloomberg) — BitMex said Chief Executive Officer Alexander Hoeptner has left after less than two years at the pioneering cryptocurrency exchange, joining the list of recent executive departures in the embattled industry.
Stephan Lutz was named interim CEO, and will also continue to serve as chief financial officer, the exchange said in a statement. BitMex didn’t provide a reason for Hoeptner’s departure, and said it “won’t be commenting any further at this time.” Hoeptner declined to comment.
Hoeptner became CEO in early 2021, soon after co-founder and CEO Arthur Hayes, along with other executives, resigned from BitMex’s parent company. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued the exchange and its officials for unlawfully accepting orders and funds from US customers to trade cryptocurrencies, including derivatives. BitMex-related companies agree to pay a $100 million fine to the CFTC.
Hoeptner follows Kraken’s Jesse Powell, Celsius Network’s Alex Mashinsky and FTX US’s Brett Harrison in stepping aside from leadership roles. While the reasons for the exits vary, underlying them all is the collapse in crypto prices. Most crypto exchanges have seen their trading volume plummet this year with most digital assets down by more than 50%.
BitMex was once the world’s biggest crypto derivatives exchange, thanks to its pioneering perpetual futures products that didn’t have an expiration date. BitMex has fallen far behind rivals like Binance and FTX in recent years in terms of volume, according to tracker CoinMarketCap.
(Adds in the second paragraph that Hoeptner declined to comment.)
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