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00:00How did you come to this decision stepping up not down as you say. Yeah I like to think of it as you know I'm taking a higher level role at the chairman level. You have ultimate oversight over the whole company. Dave Ripley will be doing all the hard work for me. So appreciate that. Thanks Dave. So yeah you know I'm excited for this next chapter. I'm extremely confident in David Ripley and his ability to lead this company. He's been with us since we were 50 people six years ago all the way up to mid three thousands right now. So you know he's seen it all. And I'm just super glad that we have such a deep bench and someone able to step up from the inside. You know we we came back around to David after running an external search and talking to over a dozen other people. And you know he's still clearly the front runner after all that. So I think it's in really great hands and I'll still be actively involved day to day. Hopefully they'll give me more time to go deeper on the product and user experiences which is what I really enjoy doing. Now obviously we're in the middle of a massive broader market downturn. It's definitely bleeding into crypto CAC market share. According to some estimates has shrunk by a third. Did that play at all into your moving aside up stepping up as you say at this time. Definitely not. This is something we've been thinking about for over a year. I mean it's a long time coming. I just felt like the time was right with the company being in a very good position right now in terms of our culture our engagement of our employees. So after the jet ski program which you mentioned and all the Wolk employees left you know we ran a survey internally. And if people are happier and more engaged and more satisfied than ever. So I think the company is in a great spot. We've recently aligned on our five year strategy. So it's just it's just a good time for me to step away know after planning this for a long time. Of course to be a transition period. You know we're looking to hire a new CEO to backfill Dave. So to be a bit of a handoff period. But you know every everything's great. You know I hate to go out at the bottom of the market. You know I mean Dave's performance is going to look amazing when things bounce back. And I won't get credit for that. But you know there's never there's never a perfect time. So let's go back to those Wolk employees as you call them of course this was very controversial at the time that you said it. And I'm curious if you faced any backlash or you're worried about facing any black backlash in your future endeavors. Not at all actually. You know after that whole thing happened we had a tremendous amount of support come in record breaking numbers of job applications coming in. And you know I think a lot of people were just waiting for somebody to say it. And they're looking for a place where where they can be themselves and not have to walk on egg shells. And you know they're looking for a place where they can just get to work and work on important things and not be distracted by a little petty grievances that people have. And so you know I think it actually attracts people and and deters the wrong kind of people that you know really not cut out to be working in a professional environment. Now Jamie Diamond just had this to say about crypto. Take a quick listen. I'm a major skeptic on crypto tokens which you call currency like Bitcoin. They are decentralized Ponzi schemes decentralized Ponzi schemes. What's your reaction to that. I feel like it's better than the centralized Ponzi scheme which is the stock market and national currencies. You know I mean it's an upgrade right. We should be asking the question is is it an improvement. You know you can point out problems with anything. And the question really is is it not perfect. But is it an improvement over the existing system. And crypto helps a tremendous number of people in the world. There are tons of unbanked people in the world. It might be hard for Jamie Diamond. Understand that running a bank in the United States. But there are people billions of people all over the world that don't have bank accounts or access to financial services. And crypto is a real lifeline to those people. Now I have to revisit some of your predictions that you made right here one bitcoin per Lambo. I believe you said no to the moon infinity and beyond. You know it hasn't gotten there. And how do you reflect on that. And do you think it still will get there. And just how much farther off is a hundred thousand. I do think we'll get there. I look at this rainbow chart for Bitcoin. You know we're at the bottom or at the extreme by territory right now. I bought it again at eighteen thousand. You know I'm still a very long term bullish. I still haven't sold a share of my crack and stock in 11 years. I'm extremely bullish on the company. I'm extremely bullish on crypto. I continue to hold. So you know I think the fundamentals just keep getting stronger for crypto user adoption keeps growing. The networks get more secure. You know we keep proving that we can do these upgrades to these networks in a secure orderly fashion. And so everything just keeps looking better over time. You know I think the macro environment is playing a big role in what's happening with crypto now. You know people don't know if they're gonna be able afford gas or groceries next week. So that certainly affects one's discretionary income or ability to invest long term. But you know aside from the speculative value of crypto you know again it's solving real problems for people that does have a functional use case in in many parts of the world. And so you know I think we should look at it more from that perspective. Like what what is the goodwill that this is doing. Can we measure this value that the crypto brings to the world by some other means besides the financial value the appreciation of the asset that you know what problems is it really solving for people.

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Jesse Powell Steps Down as Kraken CEO

Kraken Outgoing CEO Jesse Powell joins Emily Chang to discuss his decision to step down as CEO of the crypto exchange and become chairman; what to expect under next CEO Dave Ripley, and the future of crypto regulation. (Source: Bloomberg)

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