After two years as head of XRP institutional liquidity at Ripple, Catherine Coley is moving to greener pastures. Coley was named CEO at BAM Trading Service at Binance U.S., according to her LinkedIn profile. Her experience with both one of the largest cryptocurrencies, XRP, and institutional investors should serve her well in this high-profile role in which she will seemingly oversee the trading of more than just one cryptocurrency. There do not appear to be any hard feelings with her former boss, Brad Garlinghouse, who congratulated her on social media.
Big congrats to @ripple‘s former head of #XRP Institutional Liquidity @cryptocoley and her role as CEO of BAM, operator of #BinanceUS @BinanceAmerica ! Awesome to see outstanding Ripple alums (like her) going out and impacting the broader crypto ecosystem. https://t.co/zWCZ3yVqIT
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) July 2, 2019
Coley’s decision to leave Ripple and join Binance is another illustration of the musical chairs that have been taking place in the crypto space. Coinbase, for instance, has suffered a wave of executive defections as new exchanges such as Bakkt come online. Don’t be surprised if there are more shufflings from one project to another as these new exchanges take shape and take talent.
Binance Takes on the U.S. Market
As CCN previously reported, Binance U.S. is the result of a partnership between Binance and BAM Trading Services. Binance partner BAM became registered with FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, last month. It should fit in well in a market in which competitors Coinbase and Gemini have both been operating in a regulator-friendly way.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao doesn’t believe that it’s a zero-sum game for crypto exchanges in the U.S. and says there’s room for all of them to grow, according to an interview he did with CCN’s Joseph Young.
Binance has been a global leader, both for its billion-dollar daily trading volume and the legitimacy of its trading data, but it recently closed its doors to U.S. investors ahead of this launch. On CoinMarketCap, Binance boasts the No. 1 spot for crypto trading volume, which hovers at $2.9 billion in the last 24-hour period.
Coley, who is also a seasoned Wall Street alum, plans to stick around a while at Binance.
“This is just the beginning of a long journey ahead, and I look forward to working with Binance as a partner to unlock more potential for the blockchain ecosystem here in the U.S.”
She will have her work cut out for her, given the regulatory ambiguity surrounding the crypto space in the U.S.
The XRP price is currently trading fractionally higher.