The crypto boss who created waves to pay dissatisfied employees to go, says he has no regrets insulting anyone

• Kraken boss Jesse Powell said he did not want to change his attitude towards his controversial corporate culture.

• He wrote a cultural document in June, offering to pay people to leave if they did not agree.

• He told Protocol that people should be thick-skinned and accept the rules of a company.

Cryptocurrency giant Kraken, whose CEO recently offered severance pay to employees who disagreed with his corporate culture, does not regret insulting anyone.

In an interview with Protocol published on Monday, Jesse Powell said that he does not take himself so seriously and prefers not to speak politically, instead he chooses to be transparent.

“I would not go back and change my attitude about it,” Powell told the publication. “I do not want to be completely, completely censored. I want to be able to share what I think with the company. And I hope the company can give me the benefit of the doubt when I say something that I try not to attack people.”

Kraken did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The drama began earlier this year when Powell unveiled to staff a program known as Jet Ski, which encouraged employees to leave the company if they did not agree with the values, The New York Times reported in June. Employees had until June 20 to take advantage of it.

The report also described internal unrest over Powell’s culture, citing interviews with staff who described “hurtful” and degrading comments about preferred gender pronouns and women.

Powell stood by his position and said that there is a line of self-identity in the workplace. He compared an employee’s workhorse to a Disneyland worker playing Mickey Mouse, according to the minutes.

“Your job is to be Mickey Mouse and make everyone believe you are Mickey Mouse and to put your own identity in the back seat while you are in the amusement park,” Powell said. “And you can be whoever you want when you go.”

Powell rolled out a 31-page document in June describing the company’s culture that included sections such as “we do not prohibit offensive” and said there should be a “tolerance for diverse thinking.”

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He twitret in mid-June that “people are triggered by everything and can not abide by the basic rules of honest debate. Back to dictatorship,” a post that caused setbacks from critics.

In response, Powell told the Protocol: “I suppose some people interpreted having rules as being arrogant or authoritarian. I do not know if these people are unable to work in any company.”

He said his tweet was a response to political decisions made by others in the company, an open discussion that Powell said “was just not possible because the loudest voices basically drowned everyone else.”

Exec said that people must be a little thick-skinned, according to the protocol.

“I do not know what to say to people who feel they deserve a kind of workplace where they do not have to follow guidelines,” Powell said. “If it appears authoritarian or anything, you know, I guess it’s okay.”

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