Ryan Selkis steps down as Messari’s CEO after bizarre Twitter rant

Ryan Selkis, the founder of Messari, just quit his job after a series of wild tweets he made over the past week. He outrightly called for civil war and made some bigoted remarks about immigrants, which did not sit well with a lot of people in the community, and even his own colleagues at Messari.

Taking over as CEO is Eric Turner, the company’s Chief Revenue Officer. Eric has been with Messari since 2018 and per the announcement, he built the research team and developed several products.

Ryan announced his resignation, saying: 

“This was a decision I did not take lightly and one I was very close to making last month, as I considered the problems I was most passionate about tackling in society at large.”

Messari backed this up with their own statement: 

“Ryan recently let us know of his decision to step back from an operational role as the CEO of Messari so that he can focus his time fully on crypto policy and national issues of importance to him.”

Ryan had more to say about Eric. He said Eric has been with him since Day 1, and helped build Messari’s research team from scratch. He added that: 

“An understated, but terrific partner since our founding. I have the utmost confidence in him, and the other high-integrity, high-performance colleagues at Messari who will continue to deliver for our customers and investors.”

As Cryptopolitan reported yesterday, the majority of Ryan’s tweets were pretty disturbing. One said, “Anyone that votes against Trump at this point can die in a f***ing fire,” and went on to declare, “The Civil War for the country started today. Bolshevism cannot be cured with votes,” blatantly advocating for political violence.

He also called Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin a naive and useless political commentator after he (Vitalik) wrote an article advising the crypto industry to tread carefully when it comes to voting crypto-friendly candidates.

In an exchange on Twitter, Ryan asked a user if they were a “citizen or just a green card holder.” When the user revealed they were a green card holder, Selkis replied, “I hope we send you back. That’s why I was asking.” 

This kind of talk aligns with the extreme anti-immigration rhetoric widely associated with the MAGA. Ryan also posted graphic images related to Trump’s shooting and made a controversial comparison between the shooter and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Related: Arthur Hayes shames crypto investors for falling for the oldest politician trick in the book

He questioned Elizabeth’s feelings about the incident and used the term “physiognomy” to draw physical comparisons, a silly word that has been historically discredited and widely criticized.