Crypto convos: Taming the wild west of crypto with Kraken co-CEO

Hear from crypto veteran Dave Ripley, co-CEO of global crypto exchange Kraken, about the security of digital assets. Kraken is one of the world’s leading crypto platforms, and service provider to Sharesies Crypto.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you
start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.
Everything you're about to see and here is current at
the time of recording.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
It's a special week on Shared Lunch to mark the
recent launch of Shares is Crypto. We're going to be
diving into five conversations all about crypto, from how it's
evolving to what investors need to know in twenty twenty
five and beyond. Just a note though some of these
episodes were recorded earlier in the year, so some market
prices and movements may have changed. In our fourth episode,

(00:40):
Leighton Roberts talks to the co CEO of krack and
Dave Ripley about why security is so important when it
comes to crypto.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
What's different about krackin and the crypto world and what
problem are you trying to.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
Solve about cracking versus all of our peers, competitors and
all that good stuff. Look, you know, Kracking has been
around for a long time. We are built this company
on like strong foundations, security, regulatory compliance service, you know,
fantastic ux, all of those things that's foundational. There's probably
a handful of other companies that offer that type of thing.

(01:14):
What Kraken really cut its teeth on them. Where we're
really really strong is actually, you know, initially we're individual
pro traders, individual advanced traders, and so we really just
like now this population, we have the best ux, best analytics,
all the best you know, most broad products at broad
asset class, derivatives, margin, all these various different pieces, and

(01:36):
so that's kind of like piece number two. And then
the third is we're actually probably one of the most
global FinTechs in the world right now. I mean we
started we were the first place you can buy and
sell bitcoin with euros, so in Europe we launched, which
is kind of a heterogeneous market to start. Then we
move the UK, then US, Canada, Australia. Now we're in

(01:59):
Middle East and Latin as well. So we are one
of the most global. There's really if you look at it,
there's probably count on one hand FinTechs that are actually
as global as kracking is.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
What is it about bitcoin and cryptocurrency that gives it
a bad reputation for attracting heckers in the dubious crowd.
Is it actually more risky than traditional.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
Finance crypto and let's see hackers and risky transactions and
so forth. So I think the answer to this is
none of the above. False. It's a myth, you know,
when we look at it, when we look at the
data and we look at as percent of like total
transactions total you present, a total user and so forth,

(02:42):
it's actually not more significant on any of these dimensions. Clearly,
the bulk of all fraud and money laundering and everything
happens in the traditional financial system today, you know, the
large majority of it, and a small little minority of
it happens in crypto of either too. Now, of course
crypto is a smaller financial marketers is today, but when

(03:04):
you look at it on sheriff total, it's actually it's
actually not larger, you know, or more pronounced than traditional finance.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
So there's been a number of large and high profile
hecks in the crypto space. One of the most recent,
bing coinbased it got a lot of attention. What's your
view and krakens you on this and how that what
went wrong for this to happen?

Speaker 4 (03:28):
You know, this is a fantastic question, and honestly it's
super meaningful for the industry, super meaningful for Kraken. Security
is one of those things where it's, you know, when
we think about it from a customer standpoint, A lot
of times many customers almost don't have a top of mind.
It's not the top thing they're mostly interested in until

(03:50):
it's too late, right, But I think over time there
is that level of knowledge that comes across the industry. Look,
as I you know, have you know, as we've talked,
Kraken was built with security as it's first and most
meaningful you know, differentiator that it brings to brings to

(04:14):
the market. In fact, Kracking was actually founded up following
the mount Cox hack. So mount Cox was actually hacked
two times. It was hacked one time and then you know,
a couple of years later, was hacked the final time
that you know, kind of set it down right. The
first time it was hacked. Jesse actually knew some people

(04:35):
and the this is the co founder in longtime CEO
of krackha knew some people in the industry. He went
out there to help mount Cox, help him figure out, Hey,
you just got hacked. Let's contain it. Let's deal with
the pr Let's deal with the customers and so forth.
And he came back from that thinking a couple of things.
He was came back from that thinking like, oh wow,

(04:55):
that place is really not doing it the right way
and you so the next thought is someone needs to
do it the right way. And that's that. That was
how Cracking came to be. And he you know, he
talked to the co founder Time. They set out to
build Cracking, and so the entire company has been built
with like security at its core, and our co founder

(05:18):
Cto Time for many years he often refers to crack
and as a security company with an exchange built on top.
So security is super critical. We invest in it. It's
not just one function or one team. It's pervasive across
every team in the company. That's the only way to
do it the right way.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
In light of your view on how crypto is changing society,
are there any examples of countries or regions which have
embraced it in the showing how it might make a
difference for other countries into the future.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
Yeah, that's a good question. Look, I think the adoption
for crypto has you know, happened across the globe. And
I mean if you go and look at some of
the Google trends data, or you look at various blockchain
data where you attempt to, you know, associate with various
different geolocations. We actually see most of the adoption not

(06:09):
actually in the developed world. We see it in various
different places across Latin America, I mean, we see it
across you know, Africa, Asia Pacific as well, And so
I think there's a real reason for that. The financial
services that individuals have in all the various parts of
the world are not the same. And so in the US,

(06:33):
you know, frankly, I would say financial services with regard
to like, you know, a currency that inflates only so much,
less so than a lot of other currencies, you know,
access to moving money, you know, access to financial services globally,
making payments at low cost, moving money globally, and so
for they're pretty good. But then when we look in

(06:53):
other parts of the world and you go across all
those various different things, and the individual might want and well,
the inflation might be really significant, you know, double digit
or even more so, ability to move money globally might
be non existent, and you kind of go down the
list or extraordinarily high cost and slow, and you kind
of go down the list, and so I think that's

(07:13):
actually leading to crypto being adopted more so in some
geographies versus others. So that's kind of the general piece,
you know, I don't know, I mean, I'll Salvador if
they made a bunch of news of course, you know,
adopting you know, crypto the way that they have there,

(07:34):
and yeah, I mean, I guess just you kind of
see it in the data where there's you know, Argentina's
big on crypto, Nigeria is big on crypto, and number
of other countries out there.

Speaker 5 (07:45):
Crypto is generally considered a high risk investment. It's not
suitable for everyone, especially if you're uncomfortable with the potential
of losing some or all of your investment. For more
informational crypto and it's specific risks cheeks cheesies dotingz Crypto.
Jesus Crypto is offered by Jesus Crypto Limited. Mm hmm