Pantera Capital’s Exodus Broader Than Previously Reported: Sources

Senior executive departures from Pantera Capital, a major cryptocurrency hedge fund and venture capital investor with $4.7 billion in assets, are wider than previously reported, according to people familiar with the matter.

Chief Technical Officer Terence Schofield is leaving after joining the company early this year, the sources said. Also exiting, according to the sources, is John Jonson, head of the capital formation team, a fundraising group within Pantera.

They aren't the only ones to leave recently. Last week, CoinDesk broke the news that Chief Operating Officer Samir Shah, a 12-year JPMorgan Chase veteran, abruptly left Pantera after barely two months on the job. Legal counsel Joe Cisewski left to become chief of staff for Christy Goldsmith Romero, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Brian Flaherty, a finance manager, left in May after just over a year at Pantera, according to his LinkedIn page.

Schofield, Shah and Flaherty all declined to be interviewed, and Jonson and Cisewski didn't respond to requests for comment. Pantera didn't have an immediate comment.

Pantera was founded in 2003 by Tiger Management alum Dan Morehead, It started as a global hedge fund before making the switch to digital assets about a decade later around the time bitcoin (BTC) was first gaining traction among conventional investors and financial firms. Pantera counts crypto exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and FTX and stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Financial among its investors.