Artificial intelligence is a game changer for crypto

By Vishnu Patankar, Kraken’s Chief Technology Officer

Crypto is uniquely suited to adopt AI

Our industry is known for its volatility and 24/7/365 dynamic. As anyone who’s worked in crypto knows, the bull run quickly leads to immense pressures on most core functions, such as account sign-ups, client responses and token listings.

In these situations, hiring processes often fall far short of filling vacancies. Partly because other crypto companies are attempting to hire the same people at the same time, but also because new hires can take several months to serve notice periods and become fully familiar with their new roles and responsibilities. 

Ultimately, the traditional hiring model doesn’t fill roles for the most labor-intensive tasks when they’re most needed, and this can result in high turnover rates and increased operational costs. In a startup-heavy space like crypto, maintaining all these functions at scale, in-house, isn’t always feasible and often prevents companies from being able to grow and adapt where they need to.

Business leaders have to make compromises that might lead to subsequent failures — or cause them to overhire in the bull run and then be forced to make significant layoffs when the bear returns.

AI offers a compelling solution to these scalability challenges. By automating repetitive tasks like answering FAQs, conducting document reviews or assisting in initial recruitment efforts, AI minimizes human error and facilitates rapid scalability.

Kraken is on the front lines of AI adoption

We integrated AI into client engagement operations late last year, leading to a 30% increase in efficiency as client questions were addressed faster than ever before, accompanied by high CSAT scores.

Without the time lag of a traditional hiring process, crypto companies can quickly deploy new AI assistants to manage a surge in client demand, rightsizing capacity to meet market demand with ease. 

AI excels in compliance, handling initial KYC checks and monitoring platform activity. Its ability to continuously analyze vast data sets means it can detect suspicious activities and alert relevant teams promptly. This helps crypto companies better stamp out illicit activity and make the crypto ecosystem safer for market participants.

Product design involves user experience research (UXR) surveys. UXR AI assistants can seamlessly conduct and summarize interviews, sentiments and key themes, accelerating the product development lifecycle – quickly incorporating solutions to clients needs into the product.

Innovation doesn’t eliminate human jobs, it creates them

But what about humans? The integration of AI does not spell the end for human roles but it does transform them. Employees are already pivoting to roles like AI-model trainer. AI can leverage databases to answer client queries and recommend content, but it’s the human expertise in creating and maintaining these databases that ensures the accuracy and relevance of the information. In this way, AI and humans complement each other. 

The advent of groundbreaking technologies – electricity, the automobile, the internet – has historically been met with skepticism. AI is no different: some worry it will replace the human workforce because it displays human-like behavior. But the AI most of us use today – such as language processing models like GPTs – are more like advanced versions of a smartphone’s suggestive text functions than they are a human brain.

For the foreseeable future, embracing AI isn’t about replacing human intelligence, it’s about augmenting it. AI enables crypto companies to develop efficient operations that adapt quickly to market changes, freeing human resources for roles that support innovation. Which accelerates the development and adoption of new crypto applications. Which can create new jobs.

AI doesn’t compete with human beings, it amplifies efforts and boosts productivity. AI makes crypto companies more efficient and scalable, ultimately creating new career opportunities for humans.