Metaco CEO and Product Head Leave Ripple-Owned Crypto Firm

Metaco CEO Adrien Treccani and Chief Product Officer Peter DeMeo reportedly resigned from the Ripple-owned cryptocurrency custody firm.

“We appreciate the strong and industry-leading custody business that Adrien and his team built, as well as his leadership in integrating the custody team and solution with Ripple following the acquisition last year,” a Ripple spokesperson said, according to a Monday (Feb. 12) CoinDesk report. “Custody remains integral to Ripple’s growing business as we continue to provide best-in-class enterprise crypto solutions for our customers around the world.”

PYMNTS contacted Ripple for comment but did not immediately receive a reply.

Before Ripple purchased Metaco last year, the company had been a favorite partner for banks in Europe seeking help with crypto custody issues, per the CoinDesk report.

Metaco’s collaboration with U.K. banking giant HSBC made supporters of Ripple’s XRP Ledger hopeful that other banks would adopt the ledger protocol and the XRP token.

The correlation between Ripple’s products and Metaco’s banking clients is indirect but real, Treccani said at the time.

“There is an indirect link, which is that the adoption of Ripple and Metaco’s solutions further promotes the adoption of the XRPL as a protocol,” Treccani said. “Every success of Ripple the company is also a success for the XRP Ledger.”

Ripple acquired Metaco in May for $250 million, saying the purchase would help give it access to an institutional crypto custody market projected to grow to $10 trillion by 2030.

The deal allowed Metaco to continue operating as its own brand, led by Treccani, although with access to Ripple’s base of hundreds of clients and greater capital and resources.

A Ripple executive said earlier this month that the company is planning to expand its payments business in the U.S.

For now, 90% of the blockchain company’s business is based outside the U.S., W. Oliver Segovia, Ripple senior director and head of product marketing, wrote on LinkedIn.

“After being relatively quiet for the past three years in the U.S. for Ripple Payments, we’re geared up to announce new product updates powered by our money transmitter licenses (MTLs) that cover the majority of U.S. states,” Segovia wrote.

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