Who Is Jesse Powell?
Jesse Powell is a prominent investor and entrepreneur in the cryptocurrency industry. He is most known for his role as the co-founder and CEO of the Kraken digital asset exchange.
Powell is also an avid proponent of cryptocurrency and an opponent of governmental over-regulation of the crypto space.
Jesse Powell Bio And Background
Jesse Powell’s LinkedIn profile states that he has studied Philosophy with Concentration in Ethics & Law at the California State University, Sacramento. According to CoinMarketCap, Powell dropped out of the university.
Following his college years, Powell founded and co-founded a wide range of businesses. In June 2007, he founded Verge Gallery & Studio Project, which he ran until 2010 as Sacramento’s largest contemporary commercial art gallery at the time, according to Cointelegraph.
In April 2010, Powell founded Verge Center for the Arts – a spiritual successor to Verge Gallery & Studio Project’s. As of May 20, 2021, Powell was a Board Member at Verge Center for the Arts.
Powell has also co-founded Lewt, Inc. (October 2001, a marketplace of virtual items for virtual worlds and MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online role-playing games) and Internet Ventures & Holdings (July 2006, a gamer-oriented operator of content networks, forums, and online services).
Cointelegraph writes that Powell got involved in digital currencies in 2001 when he founded a service assisting players in online games with in-game currencies and account management. Powell would go on to establish the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange in August 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Jesse Powell’s Kraken Crypto Exchange
The launch of Kraken is associated with the now-defunct Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox.
Mt. Gox was hacked in the summer of 2011, resulting in the theft of digital assets stored by the company. An equivalent of $8.75 million was stolen, according to Wired.
Wired writes that Powell traveled to Tokyo to support Mt. Gox together with his friend Roger Ver – another major figure in the cryptocurrency industry. At the same time, Powell started working on a replacement exchange in case Mt. Gox failed. Powell said in an interview with Bloomberg:
It was clear after that hack at Mt. Gox, when they were down for like a week, that the exchange is really the most critical piece of the ecosystem. I wanted there to be another one to take its place, if Mt. Gox failed.
Bloomberg writes that Mt. Gox would go bankrupt in February 2014 after hackers had stolen another $473 million worth of cryptocurrency from the platform.
A month after his Tokyo trip in 2011, Powell founded the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange. The official public beta launch of Kraken occurred in May 2013, according to Finance Magnates:
Aiming to more than just offer bitcoin trading, Kraken is launching with both bitcoin and XRB trading, with possible future additions of other digital and non-digital currencies plus commodities. In its beta form, the platform is available for practice trading with funded accounts expected next week. The platform will be offering an expected 10:1 leverage as well as short selling. Trading is accomplished through Kraken’s connection to multiple exchanges.
In March 2014, Kraken received $5 million in a Series A funding round. Shortly after that – in April 2014 – Bloomberg started providing cryptocurrency information based on data from Kraken and Coinbase.
Over the years, Kraken acquired a large user base and a unique position in the crypto industry. Particularly, in September, 2020, CoinDesk reported that Kraken had become the first cryptocurrency firm in the United States to become a bank.
CoinDesk writes that the Wyoming Banking Board voted to approve Kraken’s application for a special purpose depository institution (SPDI), making Kraken the first SPDI bank in Wyoming. At the time, Kraken also was the first newly chartered bank in the state since 2008.
Managing director at Kraken David Kinitsky commented:
By becoming a bank we get direct access to federal payments infrastructure, and we can more seamlessly integrate banking and funding options for customers.
He then added:
We would expect to offer a host of new products as we get established. Those will range from things like qualified custody for institutions, digital-asset debit cards and savings accounts all the way to new types of asset classes. We can engage with securities and commodities and things like that as a bank. So a lot more TBD there.
In 2020, Kraken launched its services in Japan and Australia, bringing the total number of countries where Kraken offered services to 190.
In April 2021, CNBC reported that Kraken had more than 6 million clients and was the fourth largest crypto exchange by trading volume. Powell said in an interview that the Bitcoin rally had had a significant impact in Kraken’s success in the first quarter of 2021.
In Q1 2021, Kraken saw four times as many users as in the second half of 2020, CNBC writes. Spot trading volumes reached a record $160 billion – 1.5 times higher than in the entire 2020.
Coin Bureau overviewed the Kraken platform in a June 2020 video on YouTube.
Powell as a cryptocurrency proponent
Powell is an active cryptocurrency advocate. He believes that cryptocurrency – particularly Bitcoin – will become more valuable over time.
On March 4, 2021, Powell told Bloomberg TV that Bitcoin “is going to infinity”, adding that humanity may soon give up using US dollars.
"Bitcoin is going to infinity, the moon, Mars and eventually it'll be the world's currency," says Kraken CEO Jesse Powell to @emilychangtv https://t.co/bSwBDeYbgM pic.twitter.com/Slpl82l3Lf
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) March 4, 2021
Later, on March 31, Powell told Bloomberg Crypto that Bitcoin could be worth millions of dollars by 2022.
When Lambo? Probably by the end of the year, says @jespow.
The CEO and founder of #cryptocurrency exchange Kraken speaks to @emilychangtv and @sonalibasak on how high he thinks #Bitcoin can go https://t.co/yfkGwDPMBy
More on @crypto: https://t.co/NLRE84Up5T pic.twitter.com/55ya7epGtu
— Bloomberg Crypto (@crypto) March 31, 2021
Powell also addressed his earlier statements that Bitcoin is going to infinity:
I think I said bitcoin is going to infinity and that’s kind of hard to comprehend because I’m measuring it in terms of dollars.
I think those kinds of assets are easier to measure bitcoin against because you never know where the dollar is going to be. There could be 10 times as many U.S. dollars out there a year from now, so it’s really hard to measure bitcoin against the dollar.
Powell is also an opponent of crypto regulation. According to CNBC, he thinks that regulation “could really hurt crypto and kind of kill the original use case, which was to just make financial services accessible to everyone.”
Jesse Powell Net Worth
There is no confirmed information about Jesse Powell’s net worth online.
In April 2019, Dirt reported that Powell had purchased a mansion in Mandeville Canyon, Los Angeles, for $11.5 million – “all of it in cash.”
Jesse Powell Online Presence And Publicity
Jesse Powell is active on Twitter. He is also present on LinkedIn.
Actually, #bitcoin are increasingly mined with energy from @Tesla superchargers https://t.co/6oEyhlkBCc https://t.co/W0EzFVLqYN
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) May 12, 2021
Pro tip: If you ever need help building a case for something, state the opposite view on the Internet and within 10 seconds you will have a treatise handed to you. Thanks all for participating in this survey 🙂
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) May 3, 2021
Banks charging 1% to maybe let you withdraw your cash as long as not too many other people also want to withdraw their cash.
Meanwhile, you can get paid 10%+/yr to stake crypto.
I wonder which people will choose. 🤔 https://t.co/O7TcUYlM7b
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) May 3, 2021
Cryptocurrency investor Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano featured Powell on his podcast, in an episode titled Jesse Powell, Co-Founder & CEO of Kraken: How to Maintain your Principles in Crypto.
Cointelegraph included Powell in its list of the top 100 notable people in blockchain in 2021. Other crypto/blockchain figures on the list include Kain Warwick, the Winklevoss twins, Andre Cronje, Hayden Adams, Raoul Pal, Sergey Nazarov, Anthony Pompliano, Scott Melker, and Changpeng Zhao.
CoinDesk also included Powell in its Most Influential 2020 list alongside Andre Cronje and Hayden Adams.
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