tZERO: Byrne departure won’t stop product launch 09 September 2019New York Reporter: Drew Nicol
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The CEO of blockchain trading venue tZERO has assured investors that the sudden, high-profile loss of Patrick Byrne as CEO of tZero’s parent company, Overstock.com, will not derail upcoming updates to its securities lending services.
Saum Noursalehi, who became CEO of tZERO in May 2018 after 14 years rising through the ranks of Overstock.com, published a letter to investors addressing recent events and clarifying the firm’s roadmap for the coming months.
“While we are sad to see him go, I can assure you that Patrick’s departure will have no impact on tZERO’s day-to-day operations or the execution of our roadmap,” the letter reads.
Byrne resigned in August, citing his on-going involvement in an investigation into potential Russian espionage in the US by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as making his role leading the online retailer untenable.
Elsewhere, Byrne has also been an outspoken critic of the securities lending and short selling markets, which he has accused of being too opaque to be managed effectively.
In 2017, while speaking at the Money20/20 financial technology conference in Las Vegas, Byrne further argued that the settlement crisis of September 2008 was caused by “mischief on the securities lending desk”.
He has also clashed with those seeking to short sell shares of Overstock.com who he believes wish to see his blockchain alternative trading venue fail.
Byrne was succeeded by Jonathan Johnson, who stepped in as interim CEO, while also continuing as chairman of tZero’s board.
Elsewhere in the letter, Noursalehi highlighted plans to enhance and build out tZERO’s securities lending solution as one of the firm’s key priorities for the rest of the year.
tZERO plans to launch the next iteration of its digital locate receipt (DLR) product next month, which aims to provide clear and accurate insights into pricing and inventory orders, to reduce transaction costs.
In August, tZERO completed the market data feed portion of DLR 2.0, which aggregates the supply of hard-to-borrow inventory from multiple sources.
According to Noursalehi, the next phase, due in October, is to integrate this technology into tZERO’s order management system, which should allow short sellers to introduce bids and receive locates on hard-to-borrow stocks.
In a statement on the update, tZERO said that these two developments will increase efficiency and reduce failures to deliver for global securities.
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