GSR co-CEO Rich Rosenblum and its CTO leave the crypto market maker

Quick Take

  • GSR’s co-founder and co-CEO Rich Rosenblum, as well as its CTO John MacDonald, will leave the firm.
  • The leadership change marks another major executive shakeup for GSR this year.

The crypto trading firm and market maker GSR announced the departure of two C-suite executives on Thursday.

GSR's co-founder and co-CEO Rich Rosenblum has stepped down from his role. Chief Technology Officer John MacDonald will also leave the firm, GSR wrote on the social media platform X.

The leadership change marks another major executive shakeup for GSR this year. On June 26, the firm's then-CEO Jakob Palmstierna shifted to president while Rosenblum and Xin Song assumed co-CEO positions, The Block previously reported. The new structure aligned with the firm's "calculated creativity."

GSR noted that Rosenblum departed the firm to "pursue new entrepreneurial opportunities" and will continue to keep in contact with him.

Rosenblum and Cristian Gil founded GSR in 2013, and Gil currently serves as its chairman. GSR is one of the oldest market makers in the digital asset industry, and its investment portfolio includes numerous web3 projects such as the Layer 1 blockchain developer Monad Labs and even LimeWire, the media download platform turned NFT project.

MacDonald joined GSR in January 2022 after serving as Managing Director and CTO, Europe, at the capital markets firm Citadel Securities.

The Block reached out to GSR for comment.


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About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

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