A crypto CEO apparently wants to ban employees from being offended

This guy is everything that's wrong with crypto.

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In the 2010s, we all thought there was no human being on earth worse than a finance bro. That may have been true back then, but today, there’s an even more insufferable strain: the crypto bro. And Jesse Powell, CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange giant Kraken, exemplifies that insufferability perfectly. Powell recently released an internal culture statement that essentially bans employees from complaining about discrimination, The New York Times reported.

Within the 31-page statement, Powell wrote, among other things, that the company would prioritize job applicants based on whether they fit the “crypto-first culture” — essentially meaning future Kraken employees aren’t allowed to call anyone racist or xenophobic, even if they are those things, per VICE News. In addition to that requirement, Kraken employees said that Powell questioned the concept of preferred pronouns, said there was still debate about whether women were as intelligent as men, and started a discussion about who could use the N-word, per the Times. He also said the company will hire “solely on merit” and not based on anyone’s physical features (i.e. race), which sounds like code for, ‘I’m about to hire a bunch of similarly unfeeling crypto bros.’

Again, this type of rhetoric is nothing new. It comes at a time when many Republicans and people on the right believe that the imminent downfall of Western civilization can be attributed to people of color, women, and queer people. In fact, in an unhinged Twitter thread, Powell basically blamed the downfall of his own company on marginalized employees raising their voices. “People focused on minor slights, first world problems rather than our really big, important Mission to help billions of people,” he wrote. Among those so-called “minor slights,” he noted, was whether or not people can use the N-word. In the original company statement, he also pointed out that if not enough people are offended, it meant there wasn’t enough diversity of thought — which is ironic, because he seems pretty offended himself.

Powell said that anyone who disagreed with his “diversity of thought” approach could quit, per the Times, and they had until Monday to decide whether or not they would leave the company. Although incredibly destructive, this is likely a deliberate technique by Powell to scare off employees as the value of crypto dramatically plummets and other companies lay off hundreds of their staff. But seriously, if he wanted to fire people, he should’ve just done that without all the extra trauma.