Trista Kelley appointed founding Editor-in-chief of DL News

Kelley was previously deputy editor-in-chief at Dow Jones-owned Financial News. She was also the markets and finance editor at Business Insider UK.

Before that she worked at Bloomberg for nearly 14 years, covering EMEA market infrastructure, high-frequency traders, equity markets, activist short sellers and merger arbitrage strategies. She also spent seven years covering the health industry, biotech start-ups, and pharmaceutical M&A.

Kelley says she wants to expose the bad actors in the digital asset industry as well as bring nuance and context to reporting on the field.

“When I read about crypto I see overly simplistic narratives — crypto Davids versus the Goliath finance industry, or stories are framed as if crypto is a tool for revolution, for uprising against an imperialist capitalist system,” she says.

“The more apt parable is probably the Blockbuster-like finance industry trying to keep up with little Netflix-like startups popping up all the time.

“We’re on the brink of a huge shift in the technology that underpins markets. At the same time, as Baby Boomers die off, we’re about to see one of the biggest generational wealth transfers in history. It’s why JPMorgan is spending $12 billion on tech this year, and why Fidelity is on TikTok. Crypto could play a massive role in the rise of this new financial system. I want to chronicle that.”

“I also want to help expose the frauds and charlatans that this new Wild West sometimes attracts,” she says.

Kelley grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before majoring in journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“After college I did lots of waitressing and retail jobs in Boulder, and then decided to backpack around Asia for a year. That one year turned into about six. I was a kindergarten teacher in Taiwan, and later decided to check out Tokyo. There, I got a video editing job at a company that I had never heard of, called Bloomberg. Bloomberg transferred me to London in 2006. I’ve lived in North London ever since,” she says.

Colleagues and sources who have worked with Kelley know her as a determined and relentless reporter. Those who have witnessed a Kelley interrogation say it can be by turns funny, intense, and intimidating.