Backpack Exchange appoints audit director to strengthen compliance and transparency

Backpack Exchange announced on July 2 the appointment of Laurence King as Head of Audit, an appointment that underscores the exchange’s commitment to global operational transparency and audit integrity.

Source: Backpack Laurence King

King has nearly 30 years of experience leading audit and risk management functions at various financial institutions around the world. In the past, he served as head of audit for multiple countries in the Asia Pacific region and head of regulatory engagement for Citibank Asia Pacific. Prior to joining Citibank, King held senior management positions at a number of financial institutions, including Executive Director of IT Regulatory Risk for Asia Pacific at Morgan Stanley, Head of Global ITGC Audit and Head of IT Audit for Asia Pacific at Deutsche Bank, and Head of IT Risk for Asia Pacific at J.P. Morgan .

At Backpack, King will leverage his decades of experience to lead the exchange in building a world-class internal audit function and oversee its global audit processes, ensuring that Backpack not only complies with strict regulatory requirements in different jurisdictions, but also improves transparency for users , and establish new auditing standards for the industry.

Armani Ferrante, CEO of Backpack Exchange, said: “Over the past few years, we have seen insufficient internal controls at centralized cryptocurrency exchanges lead to significant failures, preventing our industry from gaining user trust and moving into the mainstream market. At Backpack, we Our mission is to build a cryptocurrency exchange that sets new standards and reaches new heights in transparency, auditability, and accountability.”

King added: “I’m delighted to be joining Backpack at this critical time. The digital asset industry has huge potential but often lacks robust audit practices and controls. Although Backpack only launches in November 2023, it has already demonstrated the integration "

Backpack continues to expand global influence

As a fully compliant global cryptocurrency exchange, Backpack Exchange is committed to building an innovative and easy-to-use compliant trading platform to serve both experienced and new Web3 users around the world. The Backpack ecosystem includes multiple products and services, including the popular Backpack Wallet (non-custodial), Backpack Exchange (a fully compliant global cryptocurrency exchange with industry-leading speed, security and functionality) and now the Solana ecosystem Mad Lads, the No. 1 NFT community in the world. Backpack is also the creator and developer of Solana’s smart contract architecture Anchor, the executable NFT (xNFT) token standard, and more.

Image source: Backpack

In the traditional financial industry, the audit function is crucial to ensuring the integrity of financial institutions. Audit companies play an important role in financial accounting, listed company reporting, regulatory supervision, user trust and accountability, etc. Cryptocurrencies have been known as the “Wild West” for most of the past 15 years, lacking significant regulatory oversight. Only a few cryptocurrency companies, such as Coinbase, have reached the level of becoming a compliant financial institution. Most other companies, including some of the largest and most successful, have been ignoring these issues and taking significant risks at the expense of their users. As a result, we've seen some major failures in the industry, most notably FTX.

Ferrante emphasized: “We didn’t just want to build an exchange, we wanted to do it the right way from the beginning. We built the entire exchange to enable proof of reserves and target bank-level security and auditability. We We believe this will help set new standards in the industry, especially in unregulated international markets.”

By hiring key personnel like Laurence King, Backpack laid the foundation for becoming a successful international cryptocurrency exchange. The long-term goal is to become a global Web3 financial group, which demonstrates our ambition.

[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.