Crypto Market Maker GSR Names Rosenblum, Song as Co-CEOs

Olga Kharif, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- GSR Markets, one of the biggest market makers in crypto, said Jakob Palmstierna is shifting to the role of president from the position of chief executive officer, which will be shared by Rich Rosenblum and Xin Song.

The new structure will allow GSR to better serve clients located in different time zones with crypto booming again, Rosenblum said in an interview. London-based GSR has about 200 employees worldwide. In the first half of the year, revenue has more than tripled from the year-ago period, he said.

“When I am awake, I am basically CEO and COO, and when I am asleep, he is CEO and COO,” Rosenblum said. “It makes it so we have 24-hour coverage.”

Rosenblum, who served as president, co-founded GSR in 2013 with Chairman Cristian Gil after working as global head of crude oil and derivatives trading at Goldman Sachs and running energy-trading teams at two New York-based hedge funds. Rosenblum would likely move from his current location, Puerto Rico, to the US mainland, he said.

Based in Singapore, Song joined GSR in 2019, and was previously the company’s chief operating officer. Earlier this year, Singapore authorities awarded GSR a rare license. Before GSR, Song was portfolio manager in the scientific active equities team at BlackRock in London and had set up his own crypto derivatives hedge fund.

Palmstierna’s background in algo trading helped GSR stay profitable, get a good return on its treasury and strengthen its balance sheet during the crypto market downturn, Rosenblum said. Now that crypto is rallying, following approval of exchange-traded funds investing into Bitcoin, and anticipated approval of similar funds holding Ether, the CEO role increasingly requires two people, Rosenblum said.

“Instead of needing to double down our efforts to trade majors better, now we need to maximize the value we can provide to clients in alt coins,” he said. “We also want to be able to create products in the future that our clients, two years from now, are going to be using. At this point it’s a hefty task. So having me physically be in the time zone in the US, it’s easier for me to talk to some of those stakeholders.”

GSR is profitable and has never raised outside capital, Rosenblum said.