Crypto billionaire Wu cuts jobs at one firm, loses CEO at other

BILLIONAIRE Jihan Wu is reshuffling the leadership of his asset manager while shedding 10 per cent of staff at his digital-currency lending firm, the latest signs of turmoil in the crypto industry.

Damien Loh, Matrix Asset Management’s chief executive officer, has left the company, according to two people who asked not to be identified discussing personnel issues. I Z Wong, the head of business development and investor relations, has also left, according to one of the people.

Asked about the leaders’ departures, Matrix Asset Management’s chief operating officer Yu Yee Woon said that “the firm is transitioning to new leadership, pending regulatory review,” without going into specifics.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Wu, chief operating officer for Wu’s Matrixport Technologies, said the company is cutting about one-tenth of its workforce, estimated at about 300 late last year.

“We’ve sharpened our strategic focus towards accredited investors given the significant shift in the regulatory climate following the industry wide capitulations,” Wu said in a statement, adding that the reductions will come in marketing. She said the company will keep hiring “in the areas of compliance, legal and product development.”

Wong and Loh both declined to comment.

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Prior to Matrix, Wong had spent more than 11 years at Dymon Asia Capital, leaving as a managing director. He joined Matrix last July, according to his LinkedIn profile. Loh spent 15 years at JPMorgan in New York, Tokyo and Singapore, and joined Matrix as CEO in October 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Matrixport, which offers crypto investment products and financial services including lending, said it handles US$5 billion of trades each month and has tens of billions of US dollars of assets under management and custody, according to an investor deck viewed by Bloomberg News in November. The firm employed close to 300 people, the deck said.

At the time, Matrixport was seeking a US$1.5 billion valuation – up from US$1 billion a year prior – despite the market turmoil exacerbated by crypto exchange FTX’s implosion, people familiar with the matter said. Its backers include DST Global, Tiger Global, IDG Capital and Dragonfly Capital.

Matrixport said in November it has no risk of insolvency with respect to Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed empire, but that about 80 of its customers incurred losses via exposure to FTX-linked products on its platform.

Jihan Wu, the co-founder of crypto-miner Bitmain Technologies, spun Matrixport off from Bitmain in 2019, after the world’s largest maker of Bitcoin mining rigs ran into a cash crunch. The Chinese crypto mogul now serves as chairman of Matrixport and his mining firm Bitdeer Technologies Holding. BLOOMBERG