Leadership

Michael Moro has been CEO of Genesis since early 2016. Under his leadership the firm has grown to over $25 billion in annual trades, loans and transactions, and has expanded from OTC trading into institutional borrowing, lending, derivatives, custody and prime brokerage services. Moro led the acquisitions of Qu Capital, an algorithmic trading firm, and Vo1t, a leading digital currency custodian, and extended Genesis’s footprint internationally with offices in New York, London and Singapore. Previously, Moro served as COO of Genesis, responsible for all operations and management at the firm.

Prior to Genesis, Moro spent 6 years as Vice President and Director at SecondMarket, which grew to $2.5 billion in transactions and was acquired by NASDAQ. Before SecondMarket he spent 6 years working in investment banking at Citi, covering financial institutions including JP Morgan, Capital One and Sallie Mae.

Moro is a graduate of Georgetown University, holds FINRA Series 7, 24, 63 and 86/87 licenses, and is an active member of the Oversight Committee for the CME CF Bitcoin Pricing Products.

Dr. Islim joined Genesis in May 2020 as the firm’s Vice President and Head of Business Development. As COO, he is responsible for managing strategic initiatives, integrating new services, coordinating daily business operations, and executing on Genesis’s global vision to build the world’s preeminent prime brokerage in the digital currency ecosystem.

Prior to joining Genesis, Dr. Islim served as Head of Risk at Hard Yaka, a San Francisco based venture capital firm, and previously served as Vice President at Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he co-managed the company’s funding valuation adjustment trading desk.

Dr. Islim earned his PhD. in Financial Mathematics with a focus on the pricing and hedging of financial derivatives from Florida State University and is a Fulbright Scholar. He holds FINRA 7 and 63 licenses.

Pat is the CTO for Genesis Trading, responsible for the firm’s trading technology and quantitative research. Prior to Genesis, Pat was the CTO at 7 Chord, a machine learning startup developing predictive trading signals for US corporate bonds. Previously, Pat led technology for credit trading at the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) following acquisition of Creditex, where he was responsible for the firm’s data architecture. Pat has also served as interim CTO and advisor for several early stage ventures in financial technology. Pat holds a M.S. in Technology Management from Columbia University, and a B.A. from Saint Bonaventure University.

Daniel Ferguson is the Chief Compliance Officer of Genesis Global Trading, Inc. Mr. Ferguson’s regulatory compliance advisory experience includes curing regulatory deficiencies through the implementation and customization of anti-money laundering (“AML”) programs, fraud detection and prevention measures, privacy law compliance, cybersecurity assessments, UDAAP evaluations, fair lending law compliance, and compliance management system component design and integration for bank holding companies (“BHCs”), global systemically-important banks (“G-SIBs”), domestic systemically-important banks (“D-SIBs”) including Federal Savings Banks, commodity pool operators, hedge funds, asset managers, fintechs, and insurers. Prior to joining Genesis, he served in a number of compliance and risk management roles including Vice President and Compliance Officer with Société Générale, consultant within PwC’s Financial Services Advisory practice, and Director of Operations and Compliance for a commercial financing fintech. A Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS), Mr. Ferguson holds a Bachelor of Liberal Arts from Harvard University and a Master of Science from Brandeis University.

Uri Stav is a security and cryptography professional with over 25 years of experience leading security and complex systems engineering teams, including work across a range of government organizations. He has been involved in digital asset and blockchain cybersecurity since 2009.

Jordan Goldman is Chief Marketing Officer at Genesis, overseeing product commercialization for the firm. He is responsible for scaling demand generation, market penetration and strategic growth.

Prior to Genesis, Goldman was CMO at Laso, an AI-driven credit scoring and lending firm. Goldman joined alongside their Series A and helped the business scale to originate $860 million and underwrite $6.2 billion in loans. Previously Goldman was CEO of Unigo, an education data and services marketplace backed by McGraw-Hill and Dow Jones, growing the company to 2 million registered users, 100 million visitors and an acquisition by Education Plus Holdings.

Goldman has worked as a strategy consultant for Fidelity Investments and Nelnet, launched new brands with The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, published books with Penguin Books and Simon & Schuster, and co-authored research papers with the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation. He is a Lead Mentor at the Techstars, StartEd and Founder Institute accelerators.

Arianna Pretto-Sakmann is General Counsel of Genesis Global Trading, Inc., and manager and General Counsel for each of Genesis Global Holdco, LLC, Genesis Global Capital, LLC, Genesis Global Assets, LLC, and Genesis Global Labs, LLC. Arianna was previously in private practice with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP in New York and London from 2011-2019 and with Sullivan & Cromwell LLP from 2007-2011. She was previously an academic and taught law at the University of Oxford and Columbia Law School. She holds an MSt and a DPhil from Oxford University and an LLM from Columbia Law School.

Michael Paleokrassas serves as a Managing Director of Genesis and is responsible for institutional sales and trading. Previously, he served as Vice President for the Trading Team at SecondMarket, where he focused on facilitating Asset-Backed Securities transactions. Mr. Paleokrassas joined SecondMarket in 2008. He is a graduate of Colby College and holds FINRA Series 7, 53 and 63 licenses.

Matthew Ballensweig serves as the Head of Business Development of Genesis Capital, the institutional lending desk at Genesis. He is responsible for the origination and execution of all digital asset and USD loans as well as the growth and expansion of the overall business. Prior to joining Genesis, Matthew was a Research Associate at Bridgewater Associates, a global-macro hedge fund. He received his B.S. from Boston College where he studied Finance and Accounting.

Leon Marshall is Head of Institutional Sales at Genesis. Marshall leads the global institutional sales team and is responsible for accelerating Genesis’ client acquisition and revenue expansion strategy.

Marshall began his career on the sell-side at UBS as a commodity options trader. He subsequently held senior portfolio management roles at Swiss commodities firm Trafigura and US private equity firm Apollo Management. Prior to Genesis Marshall served as an advisor on strategy and business development and co-authored blockchain research papers for crypto firms in London and Berlin.

Marshall holds an MBA and is a recipient of the Sari Scholarship from London Business School. He also holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics & Economics from the University of Oxford.

Joshua Lim is Head of Derivatives at Genesis. Prior to Genesis he ran the Spot and Derivatives trading business as a Director at Galaxy Digital. Previously, as VP of Treasury and Trading at Circle Internet Financial, he built the firm’s automated liquidity and OTC trading desk while managing the market, liquidity and counterparty risk of the payments and trading businesses.

In traditional markets, Lim traded systematic cash equities strategies at UBS, focusing on index rebalance and corporate actions. He also traded exotic equity derivatives at Goldman Sachs.

Reed Werbitt is the Head of Cash Trading at Genesis, providing two-sided liquidity for digital currencies, facilitating lending transactions, and handling overall portfolio risk management. Prior to Genesis Reed was a managing member at a $500mm+ global-macro family office. Previously he spent 6 years trading at Millennium Partners. He received his B.A. from the University of Vermont where he studied Economics and holds a FINRA 7 license.