Goldman analyst quits for Bitcoin

If you're an analyst who wants to work for Goldman Sachs, Chris Miess can show you how to do it. And if you're an analyst who wants to leave Goldman for a tech firm that specialises in getting people to spend cryptocurrencies, Miess can show you how to do that too.

Miess spent around three years at Goldman, where he was latterly an M&A analyst in London. His LinkedIn profile suggests his route to GS was a study in moving up the banking brands: after leaving the London School of Economics, he spent four months at Deutsche Bank and then four months at Morgan Stanley before settling for 36 months at GS.

Miess is financial advisor at TenX. The firm's four founders, who are all German-speaking, include three technologists and one former hospital doctor. Miess, who is Austrian, appears to be the only ex-banker on the staff.

Miess didn't respond to a request for comment for this article. He will be based at TenX's office in Singapore.

Miess isn't the first Goldman employee to quit for crytpocurrencies. Fred Ehrsam, a former FX trader, left in 2012 and set up Coinbase, which allows users to buy and sell Bitcoins using things like Paypal and their own bank cards. "I didn’t think I was fulfilling my full potential at GS," Ehrsam told Khe Hy, the ex-Blackrock MD who quit finance at 35. "When I stopped work, I'd look around and ask myself if I wanted to be any of these people in the next ten years. The answer was no."

Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

Photo credit: Bitcoin statistic coin ANTANA by Antana is licensed under CC BY 2.0.