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Kraken’s Jesse Powell to Step Down as CEO of Crypto Exchange
Chief Operating Officer Dave Ripley will take over as CEO.
Jesse Powell, co-founder of crypto exchange Kraken, is planning to step down as CEO, Kraken confirmed with CoinDesk. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the news.
Kraken’s current chief operating officer, Dave Ripley, will take over as CEO once someone is hired to fill Ripley's position.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
According to a press release issued by the company, Powell plans to remain involved with Kraken. He will become chairman of Kraken's board and will continue working on product development and crypto industry advocacy.
The outspoken Powell, an early advocate of bitcoin (BTC) who founded Kraken in 2011, has been at the center of several company-related controversies this year. In June, Powell criticized a contingent of "woke activists" inside the company and told unhappy employees to quit, sparking a social-political debate that roiled the crypto industry and beyond.
Read more: In Crypto Winter, Jesse Powell's Pirate-King Leadership Style Might Be the New Normal
In July, reports emerged that Kraken was being investigated by the U.S. Treasury Department for allegedly allowing Iranian users to use the platform – a violation of international sanctions against the Iranian regime.
Powell has denied that these controversies spurred his decision to step down as CEO, telling Bloomberg that he informed Kraken's board of his impending departure over a year ago.
Instead, he chalked up the decision to something much more banal – boredom.
"As the company has gotten bigger, it's just gotten to be more draining on me, less fun," Powell told Bloomberg.
Read more: BlackRock to Use Kraken Subsidiary for Crypto Offering
UPDATE (Sept. 21, 18:44 UTC): Removed "report" from headline and added Kraken's confirmation.
UPDATE (Sept. 21, 19:15 UTC): Added background on Powell and Kraken throughout.
Nelson Wang
Nelson edits features and opinion stories and was previously CoinDesk’s U.S. News Editor for the East Coast. He has also been an editor at Unchained and DL News, and prior to working at CoinDesk, he was the technology stocks editor and consumer stocks editor at TheStreet. He has also held editing positions at Yahoo.com and Condé Nast Portfolio’s website, and was the content director for aMedia, an Asian American media company. Nelson grew up on Long Island, New York and went to Harvard College, earning a degree in Social Studies. He holds BTC, ETH and SOL above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.
Cheyenne Ligon
On the news team at CoinDesk, Cheyenne focuses on crypto regulation and crime. Cheyenne is originally from Houston, Texas. She studied political science at Tulane University in Louisiana. In December 2021, she graduated from CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she focused on business and economics reporting. She has no significant crypto holdings.
