Gemini Exchange steals another NYSE executive

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Confidence in cryptocurrency trading is on the rise, with more people turning from traditional financial investments to crypto. As investors move toward crypto, so do more and more financial executives who have been part of shaping the financial environment of Wall Street for years. The latest to make the switch is Robert Cornish, who has been chosen to be the chief technology officer for the Gemini Exchange.

Gemini announced the move last Friday. Cornish, who most recently was the chief information officer for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), has a long track record of appointments in the financial hub. He has held several senior positions with the International Securities Exchange and was previously named a “Trading Technology Top 40” by Institutional Investor, an international business to business publisher.

Cornish will lead the exchange’s technology initiatives, as well as oversee the deployment of NASDAQ’s SMARTS Market Surveillance technology. SMARTS will be used by Gemini to control all Gemini Auctions, as well as to control all of its order books.

Gemini CEO Tyler Winklevoss said that Cornish will “ensure that Gemini continues to deliver the best platform experience to our customers as possible and set the standards of excellence for the cryptocurrency industry as a whole.”

There have already been a number of moves from Wall Street to crypto by high-ranking executives this year—Dr. Rolf Werner, who was the head of Central Europe for Fujitsu, switched to the IOTA Foundation in April and in May, Priyanka Lilaramani, previously an executive director with Goldman Sachs, joined Malta-based startup HOLD as its CEO. There have already been at least eight executives that have left traditional finance for crypto since the beginning of the year.

Gemini continues to push forward with new offerings on the exchange. Last December, it joined forces with the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) to offer BTC futures, a move that allowed it to bring traditional market instruments to crypto. This past April, the company announced that it would start to offer crypto block trading outside its regular order books, giving investors the ability to buy and sell large quantities of digital currencies on the Gemini Block Trading marketplace.