Kraken’s Dan Held on the Bitcoin Supercycle

Dan is currently director of growth marketing at Kraken.

article-image

Trust Machines adviser Dan Held

share

In the latest episode of Blockworks’ podcast “Empire,” Jason Yanowitz, Blockworks co-founder, sits down with Dan Held, the director of growth marketing at Kraken. We talked about Elon’s impact on the field, energy and the environment, and of course, the possible $500k supercycle.

Dan is currently director of growth marketing at Kraken. His former company Interchange, a portfolio reconciliation tool for crypto institutional traders, was acquired by Kraken in 2019. Prior to that, he was at Uber and also built some of the most popular early crypto products including ChangeTip (acquired by AirBnB), and ZeroBlock (acquired by Blockchain.com in the second ever all Bitcoin acquisition).

He was part of the original 2013 crypto meetup group in SF which was comprised with the founders of Kraken, Coinbase, Litecoin, and others.

On “Empire,” once a week, Jason interviews individuals that have built the crypto industry to talk about their struggles, bold moves and tough decisions. For any NPR or Guy Raz fans out there, you can think of “Empire” like a “How I Built This” for the bitcoin and crypto industry.

Episodes are released every Thursday morning. 

Subscribe to Empire today on Apple or Spotify. Watch episodes on YouTube.

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Flashnote Template (41).png

Research

We believe that few tokens at the application layer are diverging more from fundamentals than ZORA. Its fully-diluted P/S sits at 90x, pricing significant growth despite a consistent decline in weekly revenues since late July. We foresee an 80% decrease in protocol net margins due to a recent update to the fee structure that reduces trading fees from 3% to 1%, while boosting creators’ portion of the fee split. ZORA’s supply overhang also represents a near-term headwind, with 45% of ZORA’s supply (4.5B tokens or $350M at current prices) earmarked for the team & investors beginning to unlock on October 23, 2025 (36-month linear vesting schedule).

article-image

Insiders have the best information — markets should be willing to pay for it

article-image

The CFTC-regulated exchange is opening doors to crypto builders and traders through grants, partnerships, and new deposit options

by Blockworks /
article-image

DFS tells banking organizations to integrate blockchain monitoring tools to curb money laundering and sanctions risks

by Blockworks /
article-image

New short and long-term priorities include L1 gas boosts, ZK-EVMs, privacy reads, and a lean, quantum-resistant Ethereum

by Blockworks /
article-image

The new stBTC token redistributes Bitcoin gas fees to users, creating liquid yield without inflation or lockups

by Blockworks /
article-image

The reserve will collect protocol revenues to back W token, alongside new yield and unlock schedule

by Blockworks /