David Zacks is a compliance and financial crime risk executive in the digital asset industry, known for senior leadership roles at major cryptocurrency exchanges. He has served as Vice President and Deputy Chief Compliance Officer at Kraken, where he has been associated with product-focused compliance strategy, monitoring programs, and regulatory alignment for exchange operations. Zacks previously held the Chief Compliance Officer role at bitFlyer USA, and has worked across compliance, risk, and fraud mitigation functions in both technology and financial services environments.
Overview
Zacks’ relevance to the crypto ecosystem reflects the increasing importance of compliance infrastructure for exchanges operating across multiple jurisdictions. As regulatory expectations for anti-money laundering (AML), sanctions screening, suspicious activity reporting, and consumer protections have expanded, compliance leaders have become central to how exchanges manage product launches, onboarding risk, market surveillance, and third-party integrations. Zacks is frequently described as bridging operational compliance with product development, a discipline that seeks to embed controls directly into user flows and platform architecture rather than relying only on post-trade investigations.
Roles in Crypto Compliance
At Kraken, Zacks has been publicly identified as Deputy Chief Compliance Officer and Head of Product Compliance. In this capacity, he has been associated with overseeing compliance programs that intersect with product design, including how transaction monitoring, customer risk assessments, and investigations scale as an exchange adds new offerings and expands to new markets. These responsibilities often require coordination across legal, risk, engineering, and operations teams, particularly where new products may alter regulatory exposure.
In early 2026, he publicly indicated a move to OKX as Deputy Chief Compliance Officer. This transition, from one major global exchange to another, reflects how experienced compliance leadership is increasingly portable across platforms as firms adapt to evolving regulatory regimes and expectations for institutional-grade controls.
bitFlyer USA and Earlier Experience
Before Kraken, Zacks served as Chief Compliance Officer at bitFlyer USA, where his remit has been described as spanning compliance, legal, risk, and regulatory affairs. Exchanges operating in the United States must manage a complex mix of federal and state requirements, including money transmission and AML obligations. In that context, the CCO role typically combines policy ownership with program execution, ensuring that controls operate effectively across onboarding, custody, trading, and withdrawals.
Outside of crypto, Zacks has held senior roles in compliance and risk-related functions at large financial and technology organizations. Public professional biographies have linked his experience to payments, fraud mitigation, and investigative work, as well as exposure to sanctions and financial crime frameworks that are increasingly relevant for digital asset firms seeking durable banking access and cross-border operating permissions.
Technology, Operations, and Compliance-by-Design
A recurring theme in Zacks’ work is the operationalization of compliance at scale. For exchanges, compliance is not limited to policy documentation, it is expressed through rules engines, risk scoring, behavioral analytics, and case management workflows that must keep pace with high transaction volumes and rapidly changing user behaviors. Product compliance, in particular, focuses on shaping how features are shipped, how risks are mitigated upstream, and how the platform can enforce controls consistently without creating brittle user experiences.
- Transaction monitoring modernization: Moving beyond static rule sets toward more adaptive detection approaches that consider user behavior and contextual risk.
- Cross-functional product governance: Aligning compliance review with engineering roadmaps, launch gates, and ongoing change management.
- Regulatory readiness: Building systems that can support audits, reporting requirements, and licensing expectations across jurisdictions.
Market Position and Industry Impact
Compliance leadership can influence how quickly exchanges can list new assets, launch derivatives, enter new regions, or expand institutional offerings. It also shapes the resilience of an exchange during enforcement cycles, bank de-risking episodes, and shifts in supervisory expectations. As exchanges compete on trust, uptime, and market access, compliance executives such as Zacks increasingly function as strategic operators who help determine product boundaries and the pace of expansion.
Notable Milestones
- Chief Compliance Officer: Led compliance and related risk functions at bitFlyer USA.
- Deputy Chief Compliance Officer: Served as VP and Deputy CCO at Kraken, with a focus on product compliance.
- Executive move: Publicly indicated a transition to OKX as Deputy Chief Compliance Officer in early 2026.
Risks and Considerations
Compliance leadership roles in crypto are shaped by regulatory uncertainty, shifting expectations on market surveillance, and the reputational impact of enforcement actions or control failures. Exchanges must also balance user privacy, security, and accessibility while meeting AML and sanctions obligations. For executives in these roles, scrutiny can extend to program effectiveness during fast growth, the handling of suspicious activity, and the governance of product launches that may implicate securities, derivatives, or consumer protection regimes.
