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Influencers

Dan Held

Dan Held is one of the most followed Bitcoin communicators, co-founder of ZeroBlock and former head of growth marketing at Kraken, a role he left in 2022. Today he invests in Bitcoin DeFi as a General Partner at Asymmetric and advises projects such as Trust Machines and Taproot Wizards.

Riccardo CuratoloBy Riccardo Curatolo 2 min read How we work
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Who he is

Dan Held is a US entrepreneur and communicator active in Bitcoin since 2012-2013, with more than 850,000 followers on social media. He co-founded ZeroBlock, a market data app acquired by Blockchain.com in 2013 in one of the first acquisitions paid entirely in bitcoin, and led product at ChangeTip, a bitcoin micropayments service later acquired by Airbnb. After stints at Uber and with the Interchange platform, from 2019 to 2022 he was Director of Growth Marketing at Kraken. He is known for The Held Report newsletter and for his explanatory threads on the Bitcoin investment thesis.

Current role

General Partner at Asymmetric, where he invests in Bitcoin DeFi projects, and marketing advisor to Trust Machines, Taproot Wizards, Mezo and other projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem; he continues his communication work (newsletter, conferences: he was a speaker at Consensus 2025) (Verified: September 2026).

Career path

  • 2013-2016 — Co-founds ZeroBlock (acquired by Blockchain.com) and leads product at ChangeTip (acquired by Airbnb): two exits in the very first wave of Bitcoin startups.
  • 2019-2022 — At Kraken he scales the growth marketing team from 2 to around 30 people across more than 30 countries.
  • 2022-today — Leaves Kraken (announced in July 2022), joins Asymmetric as General Partner and becomes an advisor to Bitcoin DeFi projects such as Trust Machines.

Recent developments and controversies

  • The Bitcoin DeFi turn (2022) — Historically close to "Bitcoin maximalist" positions, in 2022 he publicly explained (in an interview with TechCrunch) that he sees Bitcoin's future in DeFi built on its network: a position that earned him criticism from the more orthodox maximalists, but which has become his investment thesis with Asymmetric and the projects he advises.
  • There are no proceedings or legal controversies against him.

FAQ

Does Dan Held still work at Kraken? No: he left the role of Director of Growth Marketing in July 2022, after three years. Today he invests in Bitcoin DeFi as a General Partner at Asymmetric.

What does Dan Held do today? He invests in Bitcoin DeFi projects with Asymmetric, advises on marketing for Trust Machines, Taproot Wizards and Mezo, and continues his communication work with a newsletter and conferences.

See also

Verified sources

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