Jesse Powell is Building a Culture of Crypto Values at Kraken

Mr Obnoxious - Un pódcast de Peter McCormack

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Interview location: Skype
Interview date: Tuesday 13th Nov, 2018
Company: Kraken
Role: CEO

Volatility in crypto is reflected in the businesses which have been built upon it. Only recently have we seen this volatility with Bitmain, where during the bull run of 2017 the business was generated $billions in revenue and profit, but as the market has corrected, both revenue and profit has seen a sharp fall.

The same can be said for exchanges, in 2017 most could not recruit support staff and engineers fast enough, but recruitment in crypto comes with risk. Exchanges are a honeypot for thieves and hackers with wallets containing vast amounts of crypto wealth. Not only must exchanges protect themselves from outside hackers but they too must be prepared for staff compromising data and wallets.

Under the leadership of Jesse Powell, Kraken has grown to a global team of over 800 people. To ensure smooth operations, Kraken must recruit the right people and develop robust processes to protect the security of the company, while ensuring that they maintain a healthy culture.

As an old-school, early days crypto enthusiast, Jesse has led by example, rebelling against the BitLicense and donating $2m to Coin Center to ensure regulations do not swamp the industry.

In this interview, I talk to Jesse about the journey he has been on growing Kraken, the challenges of building an exchange and broader industry issues from regulation to mainstream journalism.

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Timestamps:
00.04.11 - Welcome and intro
00.05.17 - Perspective on growing Kraken to 800 employees
00.08.42 - Managing staff levels with crypto volatility
00.10.33 - Managing culture with a large distributed team
00.13.44 - Supporting Coin Center
00.17.25 - Raising funds for Kraken during differing market cycles
00.24.48 - Reflecting on valuations in the market
00.26.42 - Too much liquidity with crypto securities
00.30.40 - Managing security and the fear of being hacked
00.34.43 - Infrastructure at Kraken
00.39.01 - Sharing information between exchanges
00.39.56 - Jesse’s involvement with Mt. Gox
00.49.15 - Jesse’s response to the BitLicense
00.56.51 - Regulations in crypto
01.04.07 - Mainstream crypto journalism
01.11.16 - Problems in San Francisco
01.16.04 - Staying in touch with Jesse and Kraken

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Helpful Links:

Connect with Jesse:
- On Twitter @jespow
- On LinkedIn
- On Medium
- On AngelList
- On Crunchbase

Connect with Kraken:
- Website: https://www.kraken.com/
- On Twitter
- On LinkedIn
- On Facebook
- On Github

Mentioned in the interview:
- Hummingbird Ventures
- Blockchain Capital
- Spectre attacks
- Jameson Lopp OPSEC
- Mt. Gox Creditor rehabilitation
- Coinlab lawsuit
- BitLicense
- Ether Delta lawsuit
- Book: The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna and Michael Casey
- WSJ: How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency
- ShapeShift: Shining Light on WSJ’s Attack on ShapeShift and Crypto

Other relevant WBD podcasts:
- WBD040: Personal Privacy and Safety in the Surveillance Age with Jameson Lopp
- WBD035: The SEC, ETFs, XRP and Crypto Regulations with Jake Chervinsky
- WBD022: Erik Voorhees on Shapeshift User Accounts and the Problem with ICOs
- WBD016: Roger Ver on Why Bitcoin Cash is the Real Bitcoin
- WBD015: Building a Decentralised Exchange with Don Mosites from Airdrop

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