Crypto prime broker FalconX has seen the departure of several senior staff recently, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Among those resigning was Tommy Doyle, FalconX’s European head, according to the sources.

The global chief compliance officer, general counsel, and head of credit at FalconX have also resigned, the sources said, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter is private. Two traders also exited the business, the people added.

Two of the people said the total number of departures was a combination of resignations and firings, and numbered between 10 and 15 people.

«Our headcount approximately doubled last year and we continue to grow. We do not comment on personnel matters,» a FalconX spokesperson said in an emailed comments.

Doyle declined to comment.

Prime brokers are essential to financial markets. They provide trading, financing and custody services to large institutions.

Before this wave of exits, Brian Strugats, head of trading at FalconX, had recently left the business, as reported by CoinDesk. He had worked for the firm for more than three years and was based in New York.

FalconX describes itself as the largest, most reliable digital assets prime brokerage for the world’s leading institutions. The company employed 243 people as of February 2023 according to PitchBook data.

The crypto firm was founded in 2018 and was valued at $8 billion at the time of a mid-2022 funding round.

Read more: Binance, FalconX and the Curious Case of 1.35M Missing Solana Tokens

In a conversation at the Exchange conference in Las Vegas, which has brought together about 2,000 investment advisors and asset managers, Dominic Rizzo, global technology portfolio manager at R. Rowe Price—the firm that handles over $1 trillion in assets—said that now is a good time to have exposure to bitcoin.

He likened the price of bitcoin to a commodity and how investors should think about investing in it. “Bitcoin itself has traded very close to its average cost of mine. So if you think about it like a traditional commodity, that’s actually historically a really good time to have exposure to it when it’s close to its cost of mine,” he said.

In traditional commodity investing, when the cost of mining or extracting a commodity is close to the spot price, it often signals that the commodity’s price might have found the floor or has a limited downside. This is something contrarian investors look for when investing in commodities, as the bearish sentiment could be priced in when such an event occurs. Rizzo seems to be alluding to such a dynamic in play for bitcoin as well if one compares commodity cycles to bitcoin price.

According to MacroMicro blog, the current average price of mining bitcoin is around $84,770, while the spot price is hovering near $87,000.

How to play blockchain and AI revolution

Rizzo also said that he sees blockchain and digital payments as an integral part of fintech and artificial intelligence (AI).

“The world is getting more global, we’re moving from cash to digital payments … so, I think digital payments is really at the nexus of moving money cheaply and taking a software-driven approach to areas that have historically been not software-driven,” according to Rizzo.

He said part of this movement is blockchain, which he believes every investor should have some exposure to, whether through holding stocks of companies like Coinbase (COIN) or Robinhood (HOOD) or those of crypto miners profiting from the evolution of AI.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Crypto Task Force will host four more roundtable discussions with the industry this spring, on topics ranging from tokenization to decentralized finance (DeFi).

The Crypto Task Force’s first roundtable discussion — the kick-off to what Commissioner Hester Peirce, the task force’s leader, has dubbed the SEC’s “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity” — was held in Washington, D.C., last Friday. A dozen industry lawyers spoke about issues related to the security status of tokens.

Read more: SEC ‘Earnest’ About Finding Workable Crypto Policy, Commissioners Say at Roundtable

“The Crypto Task Force roundtables are an opportunity for us to hear a lively discussion among experts about what the regulatory issues are and what the Commission can do to solve them,” Peirce said in a Tuesday announcement.

The roundtable discussions are just one example of the SEC’s radical overhaul of its approach to crypto regulation. As the agency moves away from the so-called “regulation by enforcement” practiced by former Chair Gary Gensler, its new leadership — including Pierce and Acting Chair Mark Uyeda — have signaled a desire to improve their working relationship with the crypto industry and provide clearer regulatory guidelines to industry participants.

The next roundtable discussion in the series, “Between a Block and a Hard Place: Tailoring Regulation for Crypto Trading” is slated for April 11. The following discussions will cover topics including crypto custody (April 25), tokenization (May 12), and decentralized finance (June 6). Each of the roundtable discussions will take place in Washington, D.C., and will also be livestreamed.