The Kraken crypto exchange is hiring — as long as employees don’t call things racist

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Hundreds of workers have been laid off in the last few days by major companies in the space of a few days. One company is on a hiring spree, but not for employees who will call out racism, transphobia, or label other types of workplace behavior toxic.

The company that is ranked in the top five globally by trade volume is looking to hire more than 500 new employees. There is a document linked in the post that outlines the basics of that culture divided into sub-sections.

One pillar is that cryptocurrencies are for everyone and the other is that belief in The Mission is a must. The section titled "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sound Money" explains that Kraken is founded on the belief that free speech, free markets, and armed self-defense are part of the constitution.

According to the next section, someone must be offended, some of the time, if they don't like someone's words.

If there was confusion about the kind of work environment the company promotes, Powell gave his own summary of the culture in a thread published early on Wednesday morning.

According to the thread, some of the things that made these 20 people a bad fit were "whether someone can identify as a different race and be allowed to use the N-word." Powell said that people get triggered by everything and can't conform to basic rules of honest debate.

5/ 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



FWP

— Jesse Powell (@jespow) June 15, 2022

The New York Times reported that Powell drove a culture war within the company and that chat logs, videos, and other internal documents showed that. Employees were told to quit if they disagreed with the values contained in a longer culture document that was sent to them earlier this year.

Powell called American women "brainwashed" in a discussion on female intelligence, according to the Times. He started a channel to debate whether people should be allowed to choose gender pronouns that were not assigned to them at birth. Many employees were told that the company culture wouldn't change even though they pushed against Powell.

By the time of publication, Kraken did not reply to the request.

There are similarities between the Kraken story and the previous controversy at the exchange. Following the death of George Floyd, a group of employees walked out after the CEO refused to make a public statement in favor of Black Lives Matter. He offered a generous exit package to employees who disagreed with him, and declared that the company was a mission focused company that would not engage in issues unrelated to the core mission.