Alex Kriete, co-head of digital assets at Citi, reportedly revealed his plan to depart from the banking heavyweight after 11 years, with plans to dedicate all his efforts towards building a new crypto firm. 

Specifically, Kriete co-led the digital assets group with Greg Girasole for under twelve months since the official introduction of the unit in June last year. 

Kriete’s partner, Girasole, reportedly also took to Linkedin to provide details related to his resignation, and his plan to collaborate with Kriete to develop their blockchain-associated venture. Both men claimed that additional information will be disclosed in the following weeks. 

Kriete‘s excitement for his new undertaking is reportedly rooted from a perspective he believed in, that virtual assets will “continue to grow in importance to global capital markets and the formation of new business models.” 

Per Kriete, the personal interest he has for blockchain-enabled digital assets reportedly started over half a decade prior and has now guided him to have worked towards a desire to “assist in the maturation of this market” on his own terms. 

While Kriete and Girasole were reportedly responsible for oversight over Citi‘s wealth management arm, the bank has an additional digital assets division under the scope of its Institutional Clients Group, currently led by the freshly onboarded Puneet Singhvi.

Another Citi executive Matt Zhang also left his position at the banking giant to release a $1.5 billion crypto fund dubbed Hivemind Capital Partners, with the initial energy partner being Algorand. 

And via a corporate leadership move of the same kind, a longtime Goldman Sachs executive Roger Bartlett also threw in the towel, sharing that it was “time to embrace the crypto economy”, departing from the bank to operate international financial operations at Coinbase.