- Kanav Kariya said he will step down as president of Jump Crypto.
- His departure comes after a series of blows to the business.
Kanav Kariya said he will leave his job as head of Jump Trading's crypto unit, which he first joined as an intern.
"Today marks the end of an incredible personal journey for me," Kariya wrote in a post on X announcing his departure from the high-speed commercial company.
Today marks the end of an incredible personal journey for me. It's my last day at Jump, a moment I greet with a heavy heart and great excitement for the road ahead. I leave with a set of incredible relationships and unique, invaluable and formative experiences. Thatโฆ
- Kanav Kariya (@KanavKariya) June 24, 2024
Kariya didn't say where he was headed next, only saying that he wants to "catch up on the relationships and reading he had put on the back burner."
Kariya was named the first president of Jump Crypto in 2021, when he was 25 years old.
Its output occurs as Fortune reported that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating Jump's involvement in cryptography.
Jump Trading has a storied history in Chicago, where it was founded in 1999 by derivatives traders. It is a leading company in the secret world of high-speed commerce.
After founding its cryptocurrency division in 2021, Jump emerged as a major market maker and investor in crypto assets.
Under Kariya, Jump helped found Pyth, a decentralized network that provides off-chain data, such as asset price information, to DeFi protocols.
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Jump also contributed to the Wormhole crypto bridge, which connects the Solana blockchain to Ethereum.
However, Jump suffered a series of blows during Kariya's tenure.
The company had to bail out Wormhole to the tune of $320 million after a massive hack in 2022. Last November, he separated from the bridge of his business.
Jump was a major investor in Do Kwon's Terraform Labs, which used the company's market-making service for its Luna stablecoin.
In its lawsuit against Terraform and Kwon, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that a company (unidentified, but later revealed to be Jump) had helped keep Terra tied during its 2021 collapse.
Jump supposedly benefited greatly from Terraform, while regular investors lost their money.
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