Jesse Powell, CEO of crypto exchange Kraken, has taken to Twitter to defend Kraken’s recent culture statement that attempted to be inclusive of everyone’s beliefs but apparently offended woke-leaning employees. Powell said that during “heated debates” about 20 people out of 3200 were not on board with the pro-tolerance approach at the firm.
Kraken recently published a blog post that outlined the Kraken culture stating “the crypto movement is rooted in “dangerous” ideas, such as all humans having fundamental rights to:
Encryption
Free speech
Free markets
Currency choice
Open-source software
Personal & financial privacy
Kraken added:
“If nobody is ever offended, we either don’t have enough diversity of thought or we don’t have enough transparency in communication.”
1/ We recently attempted to summarize what the @krakenfx culture has been over the past 11 years, and what we hope it continues to be.
We had a few heated debates and it turns out we have about 20 people out of 3200 who are totally not on board. 👇🧵https://t.co/Ht6bagQ6T1
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) June 15, 2022
The Kraken culture is one that embraces free speech and opinion explaining that “Diversity cannot exist if there is no 1) diversity of thought and 2) tolerance of diverse thoughts.” It seems that some current Kraken employees have been revealed as being rather intolerant believing only their views are acceptable.
Powell explained:
“What are they upset about? * DEI (Silicon Valley’s version) * pronouns, whether someone can identify as a different race and be allowed to use the N-word * whether differences in human sex exist at all * being respected and unoffended * being “harmed” by “violent” words”
And;
“Funny thing is the biggest activists have the most myopic view of the world. They don’t realize how discriminatory they are to others. You want to be “inclusive” by asking an ESL Saudi candidate his pronouns/gender in a job interview?”
It has been reported that 30 employees were so uncomfortable with accepting diverse ideas they have chosen 4 months of severance to exit the company. Powell told Fox News that the response from employees has been “overwhelmingly positive.”
Powell added via Twitter:
“We’re going to keep building and hopefully do a better job of filtering up front. I think we’ve developed some really thoughtful policies that might not appease woke activists but work for the other 99% of the world.”
https://twitter.com/jespow/status/1536978829708668928?s=20&t=Negih-nFseJTpcyqnVMkUA