(efinancialcareers) - One of Morgan Stanley's senior U.S. technologists is leaving the bank. Like many before, he has been lured by decentralized finance.
Kyle Downey spent 17 years at Morgan Stanley and was latterly a managing director in the bank's automated risk trading department. He's leaving to set up Cloudwall Capital, a firm that says it will be, "dedicated to connecting institutional investors to the emerging Blockchain Economy," according to Downey's LinkedIn profile.
Downey is technically still employed by Morgan Stanley according to his FINRA profile. He's understood to be officially leaving the bank later this month.
He's the latest in a succession of bankers and traders to leave for crypto firms, including - most recently, the likes of Chris Perkins and Matt Zhang at Citi. Downey, however, spent his entire Morgan Stanley career in technology and is more akin to Richard Hickling, the former trading floor developer who founded crypto tools provider, ProfitView, which aims to provide the kinds of PnL and risk analytics tools for crypto that are available for other asset classes.
Downey declined to comment on Cloudwall or his exit from Morgan Stanley. He is, however, one of the "true believers." In a Medium article published in September Downey posited that blockchain, properly implemented and with transparency and accountability could be a solution to the problems of capitalism and the dangers of totalitarianism.
"The prize on offer is a more efficient, more broadly accessible and more functional financial system that manages trillions of dollars in digital and real world assets safely and securely," said Downey. "With such a solution, or one like it, the philosopher kings could retire to sit under their fig trees and vines, their services no longer required to ensure the integrity of the financial system."
