FalconX named Baris Cetinok chief product officer on Feb. 7, 2023, the company announced in a press release1. Crowdfund Insider reported the hire on Feb. 13, noting that Cetinok had most recently led product teams for Robinhood's brokerage, trading and clearing platforms2.
20 executive hires on the record in 2023
Executive hires CryptoLately has verified, by year; 2026 through Oct. 2, 2026
- 2023: 20
- 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024, 2025, 2026
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 11 |
| 2020 | 12 |
| 2021 | 27 |
| 2022 | 37 |
| 2023 | 20 |
| 2024 | 39 |
| 2025 | 59 |
| 2026 | 45 |
Stablecoins & Payments led executive hires in 2023, with four
Executive hires CryptoLately has verified in 2023, by the sector of the company
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Stablecoins & Payments | 4 |
| Wallets & Consumer Apps | 3 |
| Layer 1s & Infrastructure | 2 |
| Bitcoin & Mining | 2 |
| Trading Venues & Brokerage | 2 |
| Capital Markets & Treasury | 2 |
| Institutional Custody & Asset Management | 1 |
The move
FalconX's release named four of Cetinok's earlier employers: Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and American Express. There, it said, Cetinok “played an integral role in shaping important business initiatives and delivering exceptional products” over more than 25 years1. Cetinok tied the hire to the moment institutional investors were in. “Post-FTX fallout, there's a growing need among institutional investors to improve risk management and trade more efficiently,” Cetinok said. “It's an honor to join a company creating dependable infrastructure that facilitates global investor access to crypto while enabling the tokenization of traditional assets.”
Cetinok named FTX himself, in the first words of his statement. FalconX's release tied the hire to institutional investors moving toward brokerages "given recent market conditions"1.
FalconX before and after
Before FalconX, Cetinok spent a decade at Apple. The release said he served as “Senior Director of product management for Apple Wallet, Apple Pay and iCloud,” and that the work helped expand Apple Pay “to 60-plus countries, more than 10,000 banks, millions of merchants and hundreds of millions of consumers”1. Earlier roles stacked up before that: Senior Vice President of product management and design at American Express, the consumer rollout of Amazon Payments at Amazon, and more than a decade at Microsoft.
FalconX CEO Raghu Yarlagadda framed the hire as a scaling move for the company's own product roadmap. “As a digital finance pioneer who created and implemented product roadmaps for some of the world's leading companies, Baris has the product and leadership skills to create value worldwide and take FalconX to the next level,” Yarlagadda said. “We're excited for Baris to help us continue scaling FalconX as we deliver value to the institutional investor community.”1
What came next
Seven months after the FalconX announcement, on Sept. 18, 2023, 9to5Mac reported that General Motors had hired a Baris Cetinok for its new software and services division. That report described nine years at Apple, until 2021, as a senior director over product management and marketing for iCloud, Apple Pay and other digital services, the same Apple products FalconX's release names3. The 9to5Mac report leaves FalconX and crypto out entirely, so the day Cetinok left FalconX goes unstated in both sources.
Sources
- FalconX, "FalconX Hires Technology Sector Veteran Baris Cetinok as Chief Product Officer," PR Newswire, Feb. 7, 2023, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/falconx-hires-technology-sector-veteran-baris-cetinok-as-chief-product-officer-301740234.html
- Omar Faridi, "Digital Assets Platform FalconX Appoints Tech Sector Professional Baris Cetinok to Executive Role," Crowdfund Insider, Feb. 13, 2023, https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2023/02/202436-digital-assets-platform-falconx-appoints-tech-sector-professional-baris-cetinok-to-executive-role/
- Zac Hall, "GM hires former Apple Pay and iCloud directors for software and services team – source," 9to5Mac, Sept. 18, 2023, https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiZkFVX3lxTE1hbi15QnVaTUJVWEhzaGVvc21hMDdDOE56Q0FScklVbU45Ty1qMHk0X1JDQ0dOV0RHcXdmMHdTanhlSlI5WUZIYlFaWTlYblUxUm83M251RW1jWU05RVQ0bk5pQUNJZw?oc=5