TradeOff Financial Corp. announced Friday that it has hired former esports executive Mike Rufail to serve as its new chief executive officer. In this new role, Rufail will oversee the development and growth of the company’s gamified stock trading platform that aims to “find, train, and reward the best retail traders in the world.”
The company said in a release that Rufail will steer product design and manage teams focused on testing, corporate strategy, partnerships, and marketing for the platform. Rufail joins a leadership team that includes global managing director of GG Poker Sarne Lightman, entrepreneur and investor Rob Kuck; technology and patents expert (and former HP, Intel, and Wells Fargo exec) Ram Ramanathan, and senior strategy developer Mark Helweg (who owns multiple patents for trading technologies).
“Today, there is no accessible entry point for learning how to trade stocks and crypto without putting personal capital at risk, which can be intimidating and prohibitive,” said Rufail. “TradeOff is going to change how financial brands reach and connect with new audiences, borrowing the best elements of what made playing and streaming video games widely popular and give people opportunities to explore trading, learn, practice and compete in fun new ways with low-risk, high-reward potential.”
TradeOff describes the technology platform it is building as an “online, multiplayer stock and crypto trading game” combined with a merit-based social network that is attempting to gamify trading education for users.
Rufail comes to TradeOff from the world of esports; he began his career as a professional Call of Duty player on MLG’s Pro Circuit 2007, and four years later served as an esports advisor to Activision Blizzard on the popular Call of Duty series as well as a consultant for Epic Games and NVIDIA. In 2009, he founded Envy Gaming and served as its CEO until 2020. In November 2021, Envy merged with OpTic Gaming, and Rufail remained a co-owner and served in the role chief gaming officer until his exit last month.
More details about TradeOff can be found at tradeoff.com.