Kraken CEO Jesse Powell Steps Down

The exchange has over 3,000 employees and has recently replaced other top executives
Powell is currently Kraken’s largest shareholder

Crypto exchange Kraken is restructuring its leadership team.

CEO Jesse Powell will no longer lead the company he founded in 2011. Dave Ripley, chief operating officer at the exchange for the last six years, will succeed Powell once the search for his own replacement as COO has been completed.

Powell will remain at the company, however, becoming the chair of the board of directors. He is currently Kraken’s largest shareholder.

Powell shared in a statement that stepping down as CEO will enable him to spend more time on the company’s products, user experience and industry advocacy.

Ripley stated in a press release that his vision, “along with the rest of the leadership team, is in lock-step with Jesse’s – to accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrency.”

Kraken has over 3,000 employees and has recently replaced other top executives.

The company hired Carrie Dolan as chief financial officer in March and then named Mayur Gupta its chief marketing officer in April.

Back in June, Kraken released a “culture document” that attempted to explain the company’s culture, which ended up being a controversial move.

9/ Most people don’t care and just want to work, but they can’t be productive while triggered people keep dragging them in to debates and therapy sessions. The answer for us was to just lay out the culture doc and say: agree and commit, disagree and commit, or take the cash✌️
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) June 15, 2022

Kraken is the fourth-largest crypto exchange in terms of spot-trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap.

The exchange also has plans to launch its own NFT marketplace soon.

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Ornella Hernandez
Blockworks
Reporter
Ornella is a Miami-based multimedia journalist covering NFTs, the metaverse and DeFi. Prior to joining Blockworks, she reported for Cointelegraph and has also worked for TV outlets such as CNBC and Telemundo. She originally began investing in ethereum after hearing about it from her dad and hasn’t looked back. She speaks English, Spanish, French and Italian. Contact Ornella at [email protected]

Source: https://blockworks.co/kraken-ceo-jesse-powell-steps-down/