27-year-old that lost Jump Trading $200m is losing top staff

Now isn't a fantastic time to be a part of electronic trading firm Jump Trading's crypto arm, Jump Crypto. Embroiled in the FTX collapse, it was recently alleged that Jump and its affiliates lost a cumulative $281m or more, with the Jump Trading entity itself losing over $200m.

The team was something of a darling when it made 25-year-old former intern Kanav Kariya its crypto unit head. But since losing all that money, it might be struggling to keep its people. A noticeable number of Jump Crypto employees have been leaving the firm, some to exciting new projects and others, seemingly, to nothing at all.

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One of the most noticeable stories of departure is the group that left to form a fintech called Douro Labs, which provides real-time crypto pricing via the Pyth Network. A trio of Jump Crypto alumni, who contributed to Pyth during their tenure, founded the company in July, bringing six other employees from Jump with them.

Other employees have moved on to personal ventures. In crypto, director of product design Dan Knutson left in July to become head of product for crypto trading fintech Ather Digital, while Researcher Nihar Shah left in September, becoming head of data science at Web3 infrastructure firm Mysten Labs. 

Some alumni are instead moving into the new tech darling: AI. Software engineer Akshath Sivaprasad left in July to found AI firm Pegasus, while quant researcher Jonathan Marcus joined OpenAI competitor Anthropic this month as a member of technical staff. Marcus was a Jump employee of nearly a decade, however, and his functions weren't limited to the crypto team.

And yet, other staff members appear to have left with no new destination. Chief cryptographer Don Beaver left in July, then engineering manager Tony Jin left in August. Product lead João Fiadeiro joined only in January of this year but left after nine months in September. Of course, these employees may simply be filling out non-competes. 

Kariya, who featured on this year's Forbes 30 under 30 list, continues to lead the team. He decried FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried as a "false messiah" when the SBF scandals were revealed, but was formerly a multi-time guest on the FTX podcast. 

Despite the abundance of leavers, Jump Crypto is still functional, but has pulled-back a little. There may be some other issues; a class action lawsuit alleges that Jump Trading earned $1.3bn in profit from a fraudulent scheme involving the Terra coin. As for Jump Trading's main business, that's instead looking to grow.

Jump declined to comment on the departures.

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