Despite a lot of regulatory action in the United States and an ongoing crypto winter, former TradFi execs, now in crypto, said they have no wish to return to their old banking lives.
Instead, the former traditional bankers who have turned to crypto remain optimistic about the future of the industry and love the fact that they can upgrade real innovation.
Lisa Wade, CEO of DigitalX, is one such executive, switching to crypto in December 2021. She was once head of innovation and sustainability at National Australia Bank (NAB), one of Australia's Big Four banks. .
DigitalX Funds Limited (ASX:DCC) announced that it has hired Lisa Wade (she/her) Wade as its new Chief Executive Officer.#Executive Leadership #citi #northwest #takehttps://t.co/lxORT3KDJp
— Finance Magnates (@financemagnates) December 23, 2021
Wade told Cointelegraph that the crypto industry gives him greater freedom take innovative risks compared to the banking sector.
"It's becoming very obvious that Web3 financial rails are the future: it's hard to innovate internally, so those of us with fire in our bellies are jumping ship."
Wade believes that cryptocurrencies will see widespread adoption in the coming years, stating that “just like ESG, this will be mainstream in 10 years or sooner.”
He added that he moved into the cryptocurrency industry to "build something great." […] in a way that a bank couldn't."
Similarly, Guy Dickinson, chief executive of carbon trading platform BetaCarbon, left a lucrative executive banking role in 2022 as the former treasurer of HSBC Australia.
“I moved to the Web3 space as the carbon credit and environmental markets space was not easily accessible and Web3 provided market access,” he said.
I left my engineering job at a TradFi company in 2017 to work professionally in the crypto space. My colleague turned to me when I quit and said, "Remember, quitters never win and winners never quit." No hard feelings, but I think about your stupid statement often, Steve.
—Malcolm (@mxlcolm) February 3, 2022
For Dickinson, the motivation behind the move was not money, but the search for personal fulfillment.
“It's not more lucrative; however, it is much more satisfying,” he said, adding that jobs in traditional finance are not as secure as they used to be:
“The banking industry is slowly dying. Constant layoffs and technology efficiencies put many professional services roles at risk. A senior bank official always has a target on his back in the current scenario”.
Simon Dixon, CEO of investment platform BnkToTheFuture, told Cointelegraph that he actually tried to create a traditional bank in 2011 before building a "regulated cryptocurrency business."
Dixon said that when he did his research to create a traditional bank, he discovered that it was actually a huge risk:
“When we applied for a license, we were told by regulators that we had to store our funds in another fractional reserve bank and that it is only profitable if we leverage customer funds like all banks do.”
Later that year, Dixon discovered Bitcoin (BTC) and was interested in the fact that "funds are held in own custody, spent peer-to-peer, and backed by full-reserve code and math."
Related: Investors Want Crypto, But Not Without TradFi Backing: Nomura Survey
Many TradFi executives have been slowly moving into crypto for some time.
according to a fortune report published in July 2022, two JPMorgan executivesEric Wragge and Puja Samuel both quit to pursue careers in the cryptocurrency industry.
Wragge, formerly a managing director at JPMorgan, made the decision to join Algorand (SOMETHING) as head of business development and capital markets.
Samuel, who served as head of ideation and digitization at JPMorgan, has assumed the role of head of corporate development at Digital Currency Group.
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