Meet the Team
Brian Peterson
Chairman
Brian Peterson has more than a decade of experience researching, designing, developing, and deploying production quantitative trading systems. He has been the lead executive for quantitative trading in multiple Chicago proprietary trading firms where his personal assets have been at risk every day.
Brian is co-author or maintainer of over 10 packages for using the R statistical language in finance and acts as the organization administrator for R's participation in the prestigious annual Google Summer of Code program. In addition, Brian has continued to research, publish, and teach.
Brian has deep experience delivering large, technically complex production systems utilizing the latest technologies and techniques, including advanced optimization, machine learning and artificial intelligence, low latency execution, and algorithm design, judged directly by their performance in livemarkets.
Nick Murphy
Co-President
After graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia, Nick began his professional career by managing business development with the Addison Group, an information technology firm. He continued his experience with Experis, where he contributed as a business development manager.
Nick’s journey to Beaxy began in 2017 when he Co-Founded Everbit Capital, LLC, an investment fund focused on the rapidly-growing blockchain and digital asset market. After joining the Beaxy team later that year, Nick has since become the Director and Co-President of the digital asset exchange.
Bay Abbott
Co-President
Randolph 'Bay' Abbott joined Morgan Stanley after receiving BBAs from Loyola University Chicago in Finance and International Business. At Morgan Stanley he worked to grow the Wealth Management division; then, he was recruited by Grubhub, a Chicago based food delivery company, to help
launch their flagship delivery product along the west coast.
Before becoming the Co-President of Windy Inc., he worked with one of the largest news and education sources in the cryptocurrency space in 2017 and 2018, Bitcoin Bravado. There he constructed analytics and insights on hundreds of ICOs to over 50,000 subscribers.
Now as the Co-President of the Beaxy Exchange, Bay is leading marketing and innovation in his roles as a product manager and marketer.
Cooper Craighead
Head of Customer Service
To say that Cooper Craighead's path to Beaxy and crypto was an indirect one would be an understatement. However, throughout a lifetime of occupations ranging from video store clerk to sushi chef his underlying fascination with technology has never wavered. Whatever the position, his dedicated work ethic
and perseverance are evident as personal standards to which he adheres.
He counts himself among the many unfortunate souls who heard of Bitcoin in the very early days, but dismissed it as 'a cool idea that's never going to catch on'. Through years of customer support and working in the hospitality industry, Cooper has learned the importance of teamwork, preparation, attention to detail, and the power of communication.
Naeem
Head of Listings
Before he became the Head of Listings at Beaxy Exchange, Naeem gained valuable experience in the fields of Project Management and Quality Assurance. Naeem lead projects for the NIX platform, an interoperable and privacy-focused blockchain. Naeem also lead projects and contributed as a QA
Executive for three years with Secc Oil & Gas, an engineering company with a portfolio of patented technologies providing operators in the oil & gas industry with a safe, secure and reliable connection point for fluid transfer, subsea and topside.
Stephen Sofocleous
Marketing Co-Director
After acquiring degrees in finance and information systems management from Duquense University, Stephen took on a role as an accounting executive for BNY Mellon’s wealth management department. In this role, he performed audits for the custodian bank’s high-net-worth clients to ensure that their
funds and positions were always correctly valued in the accounts they were held in.
After diving into crypto in 2017, Stephen left his job at BNY Mellon and began to provide consultations to blockchain startups through The Crypto Fam. Stephen discovered Beaxy Exchange when they became a client of The Crypto Fam. A year after taking on Beaxy as a client, Stephen was added to the Beaxy team to support the firms marketing efforts.
James Carney
Marketing Co-Director
James brings experience as an operational intelligence officer and team commander during the height of the US campaign against ISIS and as a start-up founder. In these capacities, he worked daily with venture-backed start-ups, top-tier venture capital firms, and acted as a direct liaison to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
As a co-founder of the U.S. Air Force’s first unit-level innovation lab, he authored strategy on information warfare, operationalized the first artificial intelligence applications for armed conflict, and signed 24 different projects for Silicon Valley start-ups to work problems for the Department of Defense.