Today digital asset custody firm Copper.co announced the appointment of new Global CEO Amar Kuchinad, replacing founder Dmitry Tokarev who is stepping down but remains on the board. Tokarev is still the controlling shareholder of the firm. The news comes shortly after the release of accounts for the 2023 calendar year showing a loss of $61 million, down from $83 million in 2022.
However, the group was in reasonable financial shape with $109 million in cash on the balance sheet at the end of last year, after raising a total of $286 million in funding. Revenues fell from $27.7m in 2022 to $20.6m in 2023.
With the new CEO appointment, Copper.co wants to expand its US and global presence, having recently landed a license in Hong Kong and acquiring Securrency Capital, which has a presence in Abu Dhabi.
Kuchinad has an entrepreneurial background in the traditional finance space as founder of the SEC registered alternative trading platform Electronifile. During the early part of his career, he spent almost nine years at Credit Suisse First Boston and seven years at Goldman Sachs. He also had a one year stint at the SEC as a policy advisor more than a decade ago.
Talking about Kuchinad, Copper Chairman Lord Hammond said, “His skill sets and experience provide the perfect complement to Dmitry’s technical strengths as we deploy our industry-leading technology to support global financial institutions to trade and safeguard digital assets of all kinds.”
Meanwhile, Copper partnered with State Street in early 2022, but they announced a mutual split a year later, with Copper closing its enterprise infrastructure division at the time.
Copper ClearLoop is its off-exchange settlement network which it says processes around $100 billion in notional value monthly across an average of 20 million trades.
