Jesse Powell, founder and CEO of Kraken, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, recently asked his employees, “If you can identify as a sex, can you identify as a race or ethnicity?”
He also questioned his use of favorite pronouns and led a discussion about “who can refer to another person as the word N”.
And he told workers that the questions about women’s intelligence and risk appetite compared to men’s “were not as resolved as one might have initially thought.”
In the process, Mr. Powell, a 41-year-old Bitcoin pioneer, started a cultural war among his more than 3,000 employees, according to interviews with five Kraken employees, as well as internal documents, videos and chat logs reviewed by The New. York Times. Some workers have openly challenged the CEO for what they see as his “hurtful” comments. Others have accused him of promoting a hateful job and damaging his mental health. Dozens are considering resigning, employees said, who did not want to speak publicly for fear of reprisals.
Corporate cultural wars have abounded during the coronavirus pandemic, as distance work, inequality, and diversity have become central issues in the workplace. In Meta, the owner of Facebook, restless employees have been agitated by racial justice. On Netflix, employees protested the company’s support for comedian Dave Chappelle after he aired a special that was criticized as transphobic.
But seldom has this anguish been actively aroused by the upper head. And even in the male-dominated cryptocurrency industry, which is known for a libertarian philosophy that promotes free speech, Mr. Powell has taken this ethos to the extreme.
Its push for limits comes amid an ever-deepening cryptographic crisis. On Tuesday, Coinbase, one of Kraken’s main competitors, said it was laying off 18 percent of its employees, following job cuts at Gemini and Crypto.com, two other cryptocurrency exchanges. Kraken, which is valued at $ 11 billion, according to PitchBook, is also struggling with the turmoil in the crypto market, as the price of Bitcoin has fallen to its lowest point since 2020.
Mr. Powell’s cultural crusade, which has been largely developed on the Kraken Slack channels, may be part of a broader effort to oust workers who do not believe in the same values that the cryptographic industry is shrinking. said the employees.
This month, Mr. Powell presented a 31-page cultural paper describing Kraken’s “libertarian philosophical values” and commitment to “diversity of thought” and told employees at a meeting that he did not believe they should choose their own pronouns. The document and a recording of the meeting were obtained by The Times.
Those who disagreed could resign, Mr. Powell, and opted for a program that would provide four months of pay if they claimed they would never work at Kraken again. Employees have until Monday to decide if they want to participate.
On Monday, Christina Yee, a Kraken executive, took a look at those at the fence, writing in a Slack post that “CEO, business and culture will not change significantly.”
“If someone doesn’t like it or hates working here or thinks those here are hateful or have a poor character,” he said, “work in a place you don’t mind.”
After The Times contacted Kraken about its internal talks, the company publicly released an edited version of its cultural document on Tuesday. In a statement, Alex Rapoport, a spokeswoman, said Kraken does not tolerate “inappropriate discussions.” He added that as the company doubled its workforce in recent years, “we felt it was the right time to strengthen our mission and our values.”
Mr. Powell and Mrs. Yee did not respond to requests for comment. In a Twitter thread on Wednesday in anticipation of this article, Mr. Powell said “about 20 people” disagreed with the Kraken culture, and while teams should have more input, he was “much more educated on political issues.”
“People are active in everything and can’t conform to the basic rules of honest debate,” he wrote. “Return to dictatorship.”
The Kraken conflict shows the difficulty of translating the political ideologies of cryptocurrencies into a modern workplace, said Finn Brunton, a professor of technology at the University of California, Davis, who wrote a book in 2019 on the history of digital currencies. Many early Bitcoin advocates defended freedom of thought and despised government intrusion; more recently, some have rejected identity politics and called for political correctness.
“Many of the big whales and big reps are now trying to bury this story,” Brunton said. “People who stay who really stick to it feel more affected.”
Mr. Powell, who attended Sacramento State University in California, started an online store in 2001 called Lewt, which sold amulets and virtual potions to players. A decade later, it adopted Bitcoin as an alternative to government-backed money.
In 2011, Mr. Powell worked at Mt. Gox, one of the first cryptographic exchanges, helping the company solve a security problem. (Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014.)
Mr. Powell founded Kraken later in 2011 with Thanh Luu, who serves on the company’s board of directors. The start-up operates a cryptocurrency exchange where investors can trade in digital assets. Kraken was headquartered in San Francisco, but is now a largely remote operation. He has raised funds from investors such as Hummingbird Ventures and Tribe Capital.
As cryptocurrency prices skyrocketed in recent years, Kraken became the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States behind Coinbase, according to CoinMarketCap, an industry data tracker. Mr. Powell said last year that he planned to make the company public.
He also insisted that some workers subscribe to the philosophical foundations of Bitcoin. “We have this proof of ideological purity,” Mr. Powell on the company’s hiring process in a 2018 cryptographic podcast. “A test of whether you’re aligned with the vision of Bitcoin and crypto.”
In 2019, former Kraken employees posted scathing comments about the company on Glassdoor, a website where workers write anonymous reviews of their employers.
“Kraken is the perfect allegory for any utopian ideal of government,” one critic wrote. “Fantastic ideas in theory, but in practice they end up being very controlling, negative and suspicious.”
In response, Kraken’s parent company sued anonymous reviewers and tried to force Glassdoor to reveal their identities. A court ordered Glassdoor to hand over some names.
At Glassdoor, Mr. Powell has an approval rating of 96 percent. The site adds: “This employer has taken legal action against the reviewers.”
In Kraken, Mr. Powell is part of a Slack group called Trolling-999plus, according to messages seen by The Times. The group is labeled “… and you thought 4chan was full of trolls,” referring to the anonymous online message board known for the hate speech and radicalization of some of the gunmen behind the mass shootings.
In April, a Kraken employee posted a video internally in a group other than Slack that sparked the latest fight. The video showed two women saying they preferred $ 100 cash over a Bitcoin, which at the time cost more than $ 40,000. “But that’s how the female brain works,” she said.
Mr. Powell intervened. He said the debate over women’s mental abilities was unresolved. “Most American women have been brainwashed in modern times,” she told Slack in an exchange seen by The Times.
His comments fueled a furor.
“For the person we are looking for for leadership and advocacy, joking about being brainwashed in this context or shedding light on this situation is detrimental,” one employee wrote.
“It’s not encouraging to see how your minds, abilities, and preferences are discussed,” wrote another. “It’s incredibly different and harmful to women.”
“It doesn’t hurt to hurt yourself,” Mr. Powell. “A discussion about science, biology, trying to determine world facts cannot be harmful.”
At a company-wide meeting on June 1, Mr. Powell was discussing the global Kraken footprint, with workers from 70 countries, as he addressed the topic of preferred pronouns. It was time for Kraken to “control the language,” he said in a video call.
“It’s not practical to allow 3,000 people to personalize their pronouns,” he said.
That same day, he invited employees to join him on a Slack channel called “Debate Pronouns” where he suggested that people use pronouns not based on their gender identity but on their gender at birth. according to conversations seen by The Times. He closed the answers to the thread after it became controversial.
Mr. Powell reopened the discussion on Slack the next day to ask why people could not choose their race or ethnicity. He later said the conversation was about who could use the word N, noting that it was not an insult when used with affection.
Mr. Powell also circulated the cultural document, entitled “Kraken Culture Explained.”
“We do not forbid offensive,” reads a section. Another said employees should show “tolerance for diverse thinking”; refrain from labeling comments as “toxic, hateful, racist, phobic, useless, etc.”; and “avoid censoring others.”
He also explained that the company had shunned vaccine requirements in the name of “Krakenite’s body autonomy.” In a section entitled “Self-Defense,” he said that “law-abiding citizens should be able to arm themselves.”
“You may need to regularly consider these cryptographic and libertarian values when making work decisions,” he said.
The published version of the document, which Kraken published publicly, omitted mentions of vaccines against Covid-19 and the company’s belief in letting people go.
Those who disagreed with the document were encouraged to leave. At the June 1 meeting, Mr. Powell …