With this appointment, the company said Monday (Feb. 16), Kravets will oversee Currency.com’s operations in the U.S. and its continued expansion in the American financial market.
“The appointment comes amid increasing regulatory clarity for digital asset platforms in the U.S., with institutions and professional traders demanding compliant access to crypto markets,” the company said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.
The release noted that the appointment comes as Currency.com pushes to expand its regulatory footprint in the U.S. The company became a fully licensed digital finance platform across all 50 U.S. states last fall. Kravets’ background in building and scaling compliant U.S. businesses will help with this strategy, the release added.
Kravets is a veteran FinTech and digital asset executive with a background in regulated trading, market infrastructure, digital assets, real-world assets and execution technology, and has held previous U.S. CEO roles at regulated trading and digital asset companies.
“Alex brings an exceptional combination of regulatory experience, operational leadership, and technical depth to the table,” said Konstantin Anissimov, Currency.com’s global chief executive. “His track record in building compliant U.S. crypto businesses aligns perfectly with our goals of responsible scaling in the American market.”
PYMTS CEO Karen Webster spoke last year with Annissimov about the way global geopolitical turmoil had driven increasing demand for stablecoin payments.
“There’s been a big shift in terms of adoption of stablecoin payments that is being driven by uncertainty in geopolitics,” he said. “I am personally seeing a big increase of small to medium enterprises utilizing stablecoin payments because banking rails are harder and harder to use.”
Annissimov added that digital assets had gone from being a speculative play for those who embrace risk, to a tool necessary for navigating a fragmented financial landscape.
“If the payment gets there quicker, faster, in a more definitive way, then a lot of these businesses are limited less in their working capital requirements,” Anissimov said. “The faster the payment, the more goods they can buy.”
