Binance has named Justin Yek as its new chief financial officer, replacing Kaiser Ng, who is leaving the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange after more than five years. The change was announced on Saturday, November 7, nine days after hackers stole about $6.3 billion from the exchange in the largest cryptocurrency theft on record.
Summary
- Binance said on November 7 that chief financial officer Kaiser Ng is leaving to pursue a new venture, and will be replaced by Justin Yek, formerly vice-president of finance at payments firm Airwallex.
- Co-CEO Yi He said the transition had been planned over the last six months, before the October 29 hack. The company has not disclosed when the handover takes effect.
- Ng has been Binance’s CFO since January 2022 and previously held the same role at rival exchange Kraken for about five years.
- Ng said in a post on X on November 8 that he is starting his own business focused on bringing real-world assets such as sports, entertainment, gold and collectibles onto the blockchain through tokenization.
- The October 29 breach drained about $6.3 billion from Binance’s hot wallets. The FBI has attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking group. Binance said it had replenished about 98% of the affected assets as of October 31 using its own funds.
A planned handover, Binance says
“Kaiser Ng has decided to pursue a new venture after more than five years at Binance, with a transition plan implemented over the last half year,” Binance co-CEO Yi He said in a statement on Saturday, Reuters reported. The statement did not say when Ng’s departure takes effect or what his next venture is.
Yek is a longtime finance executive who most recently served as vice-president of finance at Airwallex, a global payments and financial technology company. “I am thrilled to step into the role of CFO at Binance,” Yek said in the statement, The Edge Singapore reported.
Binance has stressed that the leadership change is not a response to the hack. A company spokesperson confirmed to FOX Business that the transition was planned more than six months ago and had no connection to the security incident, according to JBizNews. Cointelegraph reported the same framing, noting that the news came a little more than a week after the record theft.
Ng’s next venture: tokenizing real-world assets
Ng confirmed the move himself in a post on X, saying that after five years as CFO at Binance he has decided to start his own business and is handing the position to “the next CFO, Justin.” He said he will focus on projects in sports and entertainment, spanning basketball, music, GPUs, robotics, gold and collectibles, and plans to bring those real-world assets onto the blockchain through tokenization. He added that Binance will continue to grow with the launch of traditional finance assets and AI user interfaces, PANews reported.
Ng posted on X:
The hack in the background
The leadership change lands as Binance continues to recover from the October 29 attack, in which attackers drained about $6.3 billion across multiple blockchains. The FBI said on October 31 that North Korea was responsible for the attack, The Block reported.
Binance said in a November 3 update that about 98% of the impacted token assets had been replenished as of October 31 using company-controlled resources, and it has been restoring withdrawals in phases since November 1. Withdrawals for the Hyperliquid token HYPE and the Aptos token APT were restored on November 8, with the remaining assets dependent on security checks.
The timing of the announcement has drawn attention because a finance chief’s departure so soon after a record loss would normally raise questions. Binance’s answer is that the succession was arranged months before the breach, and that the two events are unrelated. What is not yet public is when Yek formally takes over, or what Ng’s new venture will be called.
What happens next
The handover puts Yek in charge of Binance’s finances at a demanding moment. The exchange has said it will fully reimburse affected customers, and withdrawals surged when the platform reopened. His first test will be steering the balance sheet through the remainder of the recovery while the exchange continues its push for regulatory licences, including its long-running effort to secure authorisation in the European Union.
For now, the confirmed facts are the change itself, the successor, and the company’s position that it was planned. The effective date of the handover and the details of Ng’s new venture have not been disclosed.
