New CEO of Kraken says no plans to register with SEC

The incoming CEO for cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, Dave Ripley, said on Thursday that his exchange had no plans to register with the SEC as a market intermediary.

With Jesse Powell, the long-time CEO of Kraken stepping down, Dave Ripley, the new CEO, is immediately laying down markers to show that he will continue in Powell’s footsteps and will not bow down to any potential overreach from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Ripley takes over from Powell as the crypto industry is facing an extremely difficult time. Not only has the market crashed as the Fed continues to hike interest rates, but regulatory legislation could stifle and suppress this industry along with the many innovations that it is producing.

Ex CEO Jesse Powell made a name for himself and his company when  he refused to block the wallets of ordinary Russians after the invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. 

Whilst complying with an order to block blacklisted Russians, Powell refused to block everybody, saying that it was not fair to make all Russian citizens an object of sanctions.

Now that Ripley has taken over the reins at Kraken, it appears that the exchange will carry on much as it did before by espousing the libertarian values followed by Powell before him, and by the cryptocurrency industry in general.

It is public knowledge that the SEC is scrutinising several tokens on the Coinbase platform after identifying them as securities, but new Kraken boss Ripley has said that there were no plans to remove them from his exchange.

As reported on International Business Times, Ripley also stated that he saw no reason to register with the SEC, despite calls to do so from chairman Gensler, because Kraken did not offer securities.

"There are not any tokens out there that are securities that we're interested in listing," he said. "There could be some new token out there that becomes interesting and also happens to simultaneously be a security [and] in that case, we would potentially be interested in that path."

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.