S.F. crypto CEO says debate on pronouns and race is a distraction
Cryptocurrency markets have been roiled in recent weeks, with bitcoin losing half its value compared to a year ago while other cryptocurrencies plunge as inflation rises and fears of a recession loom.
Those gloomy economic indicators have led to large layoffs at crypto exchanges like Coinbase, which slashed close to a fifth of its staff this week. They’re also adding to internal strife at another one of the world’s largest exchanges, San Francisco’s Kraken.
Company CEO Jesse Powell said in a Twitter thread Wednesday that debate over diversity, equity and inclusion issues from a few employees had become a distraction from the company’s goals.
Powell accused activist employees of being myopic, saying, “You want to be ‘inclusive’ by asking an ESL Saudi candidate his pronouns/gender in a job interview?”
“Great talent, bad fit,” Powell wrote of what he characterized as a small group of employees who were not sufficiently focused on the company’s goals and who he later characterized as “woke.”
“When things were rosy, everybody got along. When things started to look grim, sensitivities and the misalignment came through,” he said, seeming to refer to the down crypto market. “People focused on minor slights, first world problems rather than our really big, important mission to help billions of people.”
Powell said debates around pronouns and race had become distractions from the company’s mission of speeding the global adoption of cryptocurrencies, adding, “…people get triggered by everything and can’t conform to basic rules of honest debate. Back to dictatorship.”
Powell also said he believed an employee had shared internal chats with a journalist and expected a negative article about the company to publish shortly.
On Wednesday, the New York Times published a lengthy story in which it said Powell questioned employees choosing their own pronouns and raised questions about womens’ intelligence, also starting a discussion about who can use “the n-word,” although he is white.
A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email seeking to verify those claims.
This is not the first time Kraken has come into conflict with its own employees. Its parent company sued employees who left anonymous reviews on the company rating site Glassdoor after a round of layoffs in an attempt to reveal their identities.
Unlike companies like Coinbase, which have sought to cut staff as Bitcoin and other crypto holdings have cratered, Kraken said it would not lay anyone off and planned to continue hiring for hundreds of positions this year — but only the right kinds of people.
“We understand that while we will always be a great place to work for some who share our mission, we may not be the most compatible company for some others,” a document outlining the company’s culture said.
Part of that culture includes a commitment to accelerating the spread of crypto globally, as well as the idea of limited government, self-defense and personal property. But the libertarian values of the company’s founders, and much of the crypto industry, have collided with the values of Silicon Valley’s left-leaning wing.
The company said it would “engage in lobbying, as a single-issue donor, supporting controversial politicians and legislation that furthers The Mission, possibly to the detriment of other civil rights causes,” without saying what those were.
Advertising on controversial programs and podcasts would also be in bounds for Kraken, as would potentially incorporating firearms and self-defense training at corporate retreats
One section of the document, titled “Someone Must be Offended, Some of the Time,” said there was no time to “sugarcoat” work interactions, and pointed to the diverse backgrounds of international employees making some cultural conflict inevitable.
Leaders with strong ethics tend to focus on building community, said Don Heider, chief executive of The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “He says he wants to create community and yet his actions and words are kind of divisive,” Heider said.
Cutting off dialogue around important issues points to “a leader who is more concerned with their own ego and power and control than they are truly concerned about building a community” around shared values, Heider said.
Powell’s pronouncements and the company’s statements appeared to fall short of a decree from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in October of 2020, when he said that internal debates about politics and activism not related to work would no longer be tolerated. The edict came at a time when social justice protests were roiling the country, set off by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Those who disagreed could take exit packages, and some did.
While Kraken has not outright banned certain discussions, Powell, in his tweets, said employees had the choice to “agree and commit, disagree and commit, or take the cash,” implying an exit package if they were not on board with the culture document. “I think we’ve developed some really thoughtful policies that might not appease woke activists but work for the other 99% of the world,” Powell wrote.
Chase DiFeliciantonio is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice
