Cryptocurrency: Bitpanda Pro appoints former JP Morgan executive as CEO

Bitpanda Pro, a Europe-based trading platform and digital asset exchange for traders, professionals, and companies, announced on Thursday, Oct. 28, that it had appointed Joshua Barraclough as its new chief executive officer. The chief will be immediately leading the crypto exchange.

Cointelegraph reported that Bitpanda Pro chose another executive coming from the traditional finance company to join its team. The recruitment of Barraclough also happened just two months after the firm raised $263 million.

Prior to his entrance into the cryptocurrency space, Barraclough was one of the leaders at JP Morgan. He was the investment banking firm's global head of the fintech team as well as co-head of digital innovation in London.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Barraclough was asked about his transfer to Bitpanda Pro, and he admitted that the decision to leave JP Morgan and move to a crypto exchange company was not easy.

"I have always been at the bleeding edge of innovation, and my job at JP Morgan was to launch new businesses to challenge and transform traditional finance," he told the publication. "The crypto ecosystem is the most exciting part of that right now, with an incredible pace of change and growth in adoption. We want further to bridge the gap between digital assets and traditional finance, building on my prior experience."

Now, as he officially moves to Bitpanda Pro and his work begins, Barraclough said they are actively looking at offering more traditional assets in addition to gold and silver using blockchain technology and tokenization.

At any rate, Bitpanda Pro warmly welcomed its new CEO through a blog post. The company said it is aware that finding a good leader with the right experience, capabilities, and passion for the business is such a daunting task. It said that it is even more difficult because it is looking for someone who will deal with the complexity of digital assets exchanges.

However, Bitpanda Pro succeeded in finding just the right person, and for this, the company is excited to have Joshua Barraclough on board. "We're in full hyper-growth mode and more than happy to welcome Joshua Barraclough as CEO of Bitpanda Pro. Josh is joining us from J.P. Morgan and he'll take our digital assets exchange to the next level," Bitpanda Pro said.