Galaxy Digital Recruits BlockFi CEO For New Banking Platform

Galaxy Digital is reportedly launching a banking platform led by former BlockFi CEO Zac Prince.

“I learned a ton from BlockFi,” Prince told Bloomberg News in an interview Monday (Oct. 6).

“My personal risk appetite and professional risk appetite is wildly different, much more conservative now, obviously based on the experiences that we had.”

BlockFi was a wealth management platform that declared bankruptcy following the implosion of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange in 2022, one of many digital asset firms to collapse during that year’s crypto crash.

At its peak, BlockFi held roughly $14.7 billion worth of investor assets and had nearly 400,000 US-based investor clients, Bloomberg said, citing a 2022 cease and desist order filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The SEC charged BlockFi with failing to register its crypto lending product and found that BlockFi made false and misleading statements about the level of risk in its loan portfolio.

BlockFi settled the charges, without admitting or denying the regulator’s findings, and paused the interest account offering in the U.S.

Fast forward to 2025, when Galaxy hired Prince to oversee a new platform offering retail customers high-yield checking accounts, crypto trading and commission-free stock trading.

“We are preserving a lot of the great things BlockFi did in terms of bringing compelling products to the market,” Prince said, noting that BlockFi was a pioneer in some product areas that were well received.

According to Prince, BlockFi was the first crypto company to have a number that customers could call to talk with US client service representatives.

Galaxy, he added, is “night and day in terms of the differences in the setup and the risk appetite and the regulatory structures of the businesses.”

Galaxy employs around two dozen risk-focused workers, a number that has grown fourfold over the past few years, a company spokesperson told Bloomberg.

“I’ve interacted with more risk folks at Galaxy than I think we had, you know, at our peak size at BlockFi,” Prince said.

In other cryptocurrency-related news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the emergence of crypto-enabled trade finance.

“Visa’s stablecoin pilot signals how this might scale,” that report said. “By allowing businesses to prefund accounts in digital tokens, then convert to local currency upon settlement, the system reduces the need for multiple prefunded foreign accounts.”

For all PYMNTS digital transformation coverage, subscribe to the daily Digital Transformation Newsletter.