It’s been over 14 months since we closed the GMT token sale, and lately I’ve been reflecting back on how far we’ve come since November 2017. Much has changed with the company since the GMT launch…the team, our product, our understanding of tokens and consumers…and in the macro environment as well…the crypto market downturn, continued privacy breaches in the news, and the continued evolution of social media and digital communications.

About one year ago, I came to the realization that if I wanted to successfully bring Mercury Protocol to life, I would need some help. After all, if my goal was to build a new digital world based on trust, I needed to find other executives who shared my same vision and passion for changing the digital world. To that end, I couldn’t be more thankful for Andrew Hunt and Dave Ou’s dedication in helping to propel forward a new technological future built on the founding principle of trust. Together, they have been instrumental in navigating the challenges over the past year. Through their hard work, I’m proud to say that we were able to scale the team and adapt to an evolving regulatory environment all while relaunching a high quality product.

Now, with the relaunch of Dust, I’ve decided to focus my attention on being fully engrained in product and cultivating our partnerships by helping our organization align with brands, influencers, institutions and investors in order to help drive our mission forward. Building strong external relationships is the biggest hurdle our organization faces at the moment, and to free up my time to focus on this, I’m excited to announce that Andrew Hunt will be taking over as CEO to manage day-to-day operations.

What originally caught my attention when I was introduced to Andrew through an advisor early last year was his breadth of experience working for growing companies. He started his career as a technology entrepreneur in college “building cool websites for beer money” as per his LinkedIn. And he has since been a part of two IPOs, co-founded a seed stage venture capital fund here in LA, co-founded a luxury apparel brand and led the turn-around of an ad-tech firm. Not to mention the fact that he developed a six megawatt solar project on the roof of the Mandalay Bay convention center, co-founded a successful urban farm non-profit, and has advised numerous startups and growth companies in the Los Angeles ecosystem.

Over the past year as President, Andrew has demonstrated the ability to effectively steer our organization and deliver on our mission of reinstilling privacy back into the digital world. His technical background and extensive management experience is exactly what our organization needs to accelerate growth and further build value for our team, our investors and our community. Simply put, Andrew brings a level of experience and a focus on execution that we need at this point in the company’s lifecycle. I’ve learned and collaborated with him a great deal over the past year, and I look forward to partnering with him to grow this company and achieve our mission.

Last but not least, I want to reiterate our commitment to the Mercury Protocol community to continue pushing forward with our vision and mission. My change in title should be seen as a positive development for Mercury Protocol as I will be applying my expertise to continue solving the hardest problems needed to fulfill our mission. When we started back in mid 2017, we knew the vision we had would be a long term initiative. So I want to thank all of our token holders for your patience, and reiterate to you that we are steadfast in our commitment to building a new digital era founded on trust.