Top Bitcoin Exchange CEO Issues This Warning About Cryptocurrencies Ahead of Coinbase IPO

Cryptocurrencies have been all the rage for the past year with the top cryptocurrency Bitcoin soaring past $60,000 recently. Bitcoin was trading at around $60,105 on Monday.

Jesse Powell, the CEO of bitcoin exchange Kraken, has issued a warning however and has said that there “could be some crackdown” on cryptocurrencies.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other officials have been warning about the use of cryptocurrencies for illicit transactions.
According to Powell, governments around the world may start to clamp down on the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

“I think there could be some crackdown,” Powell told CNBC in an interview.

According to a CNBC report recently, Kraken is the world’s fourth-largest digital currency exchange in terms of trading volume and is considering going public through a direct listing in 2022.

Crypto exchange Coinbase is going public through a similar way and is set to debut in the market on Wednesday. The company could be valued at as much as $100 billion.

Kraken’s CEO believes regulatory uncertainty around crypto isn’t going away anytime soon, especially after a rule had been proposed by the U.S. government recently that would require those who hold their crypto in private digital wallets to undergo identity checks if they make transactions of over $3,000.

“Something like that could really hurt crypto and kind of kill the original use case, which was to just make financial services accessible to everyone,” Powell explained.

“I hope that the U.S. and international regulators don’t take too much of a narrow view on this,” Powell said. “Some other countries, China especially, are taking crypto very seriously and taking a very long-term view.”

The CEO believes that the U.S. is more “shortsighted” than other nations and “susceptible” to the pressures of incumbent legacy businesses — in other words, the banks — that “stand to lose from crypto becoming a big deal.”

“I also think it might be too late,” Powell added. “Maybe the genie’s out of the bottle and just trying to ban it at this point would make it more attractive. It would certainly send a message that the government sees this as a superior alternative to their own currency.“