Kraken's new CTO eyes growing role of AI in crypto beyond initial hype

Kraken's new chief technology officer thinks it will be hard to ignore the growing impact of artificial intelligence and large language models, and he's paying attention to areas where it could be deployed across the crypto industry.

"It will be interesting to see what business models sustain through the initial hype cycle and journey to product-market fit, revenue and ebitda," Vishnu Patankar said in a blog post, in which he noted some fundamental differences between the two technologies. "It might be okay to have a 90% correct answer from an AI chatbot, but there’s less use for a password that is 90% correct."

Patankar, whose appointment to Kraken was announced by the company on Monday, said that generative AI and personalization applied to NFTs, fraud prevention, cybersecurity are all "symbiotic areas" between crypto and AI. 

"Beyond these, both AI and crypto explore large amounts of data through massive computational power," he said. "There are areas in computer science and physics that could lead to further breakthroughs over the next couple of decades. One area I’m excited by is quantum computing and its interplay with factorization of large numbers."

Before joining Kraken, Patankar was the CTO at StockX, where he helped launch the company's NFT offering. He brings more than 20 years of experience and has helped companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Intel and Groupon, Kraken said in an emailed statement on Monday.

Kraken said his focus will be on scaling the company into "the most promising areas of crypto" while maintaining a focus on security and clients.