The Bitcoin Foundation announced yesterday that Jon Matonis would be stepping down as Executive Director. The position would be filled by Patrick Murck who had formally worked as the Foundation's General Counsel. The Foundation stated that a new General Counsel would soon be announced.
Matonis was one of the founding leadership of the Bitcoin Foundation, along with Mark Karpeles of Mt Gox, Gavin Andresen, and Charlie Shrem two years ago. Since that time both Charlie Shrem and Mark Karpeles left the organization to avoid any entanglement with their legal problems.
Since that time Andreas Antonopoulas also ended his relationship with the organization stating: "A couple of weeks ago, I resigned as head of the Bitcoin Foundation's anti-poverty committee. Today I also resigned as a member.
Under the leadership of Jon Matonis the Foundation was able to create a website where people could access information about the Foundation's operations and have access to Foundation resources. He was also able to establish relationships with affiliates in numerous countries around the world and the establishment of the Financial Standards Working Group to establish XBT as the ISO currency code for Bitcoin.
He was certainly well suited for the job. Prior to his appointment to executive director he was CEO of Hushmail, Chief FX Dealer for VISA and Director of Financial Services at VeriSign and a contributor to Forbes and CoinDesk and as the editor of The Monetary Future.
"With any young industry there is going to be bumps in the road. The Bitcoin Foundation is trying their hardest to promote the industry, as are we.
Murck plans to do this by taking action on two fronts. First, the new executive chairman plans to repair the relationship with the Bitcoin community. "To do that effectively we may have to take some risks around communications and transparency to show that we can be honestly engaged with the community," said Murck.