Fidelity, Schwab, Citadel-Backed Crypto Exchange EDX Markets Appoints New CEO

EDX Markets, the institution-only crypto exchange that started operations in June 2023 with support from Wall Street giants like Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities, has appointed its current chief technology officer, Tony Acuña-Rohter, as CEO.

Wall Street veteran Jamil Nazarali, the founder and current CEO of the exchange, will move to the position of executive chairman of the board, according to a press release.

Acuña-Rohter previously served as the chief technology officer of the firm since joining in 2022. Before EDX, he was the CTO of ErisX, a crypto firm acquired by Cboe in late 2021 that led to the start of Cboe Digital, the crypto arm of Cboe.

“I am proud to have led EDX through its initial start-up phase and to have built such a strong team of leaders and operators across the firm,” said Jamil Nazarali, Executive Chair, EDX. “EDX promptly reached significant volumes and has seen a growing client base and strong institutional and retail flows since launch. Now is the right time to transition operational responsibilities to a new generation of leaders.”

EDX announced its creation in September 2022 with backing from major investment firms, instantly drawing attention to the new project, also because of its separation between the exchange function and the broker dealer function. The crypto exchange differs from others, because it doesn’t custody customers’ digital assets and instead forces users to go through financial intermediaries to buy and sell assets.

The platform currently offers six tokens — bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), litecoin (LITE), bitcoin cash (BCH), shiba inu (SHIB) and dogecoin (DOGE) — the latter two which were added in November.

Trading volume on the platform has been strong as of late, the company said in a blog post in November, with more than $36 billion in notional volume since the start of the year.