I’m David Kemmerer, the CEO and Co-Founder of CoinLedger. I got into blockchain when I noticed a gap- people were having a hard time reconciling thousands of trades for the IRS. The industry lacked a bridge between decentralized finance and traditional compliance and I tapped into it. We built CoinLedger to automate the tax reporting for investors. My finance roots at UW-Madison and my time at Oracle made it easier for me. I had an idea on how to transform complex data into seamless user experiences. I now lead a distributed, global team dedicated to building the financial infrastructure necessary for crypto to go mainstream. We’re moving beyond just tax software to become the definitive portfolio management layer for the digital asset economy.
Company: CoinLedger
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
David Kemmerer: Thanks for having me, Jed. It’s great to be here.
I’m David Kemmerer, and my journey into the crypto world didn’t start with a grand vision of decentralized finance—it actually started with a massive tax headache. Back in 2017, I was doing a lot of high-frequency trading and arbitrage. When tax season rolled around, I realized I had tens of thousands of transactions scattered across dozens of exchanges with absolutely no way to report them accurately.
I went to Reddit to see how other people were handling it, and that’s where I met my co-founders. We realized we weren’t the only ones drowning in spreadsheets, so we built what was originally CryptoTrader.Tax to solve our own problem.
Today, that’s evolved into CoinLedger. We’ve moved beyond just being a tax tool to becoming a full portfolio management platform. We help over 500,000 investors across the globe track their digital assets and stay compliant without the manual stress. We’ve stayed a lean, remote-first team—about 50 of us now—focused on making the technical side of crypto as invisible as possible so people can actually enjoy the technology.
What was the defining moment when you decided that strong ethics and high profits were not in conflict, but could actually reinforce each other in your business?
David Kemmerer: When we had to decide how we would handle user data and tax accuracy. We could have taken shortcuts—building a “good enough” tool that pumped out reports that might not actually hold up under an audit, but would look great for a marketing headline.
It was tempting, but we chose the harder path: transparency and accuracy. We decided that if we were going to be the source of truth for someone’s financial life, we couldn’t cut corners.
What we found was that this ethical stance actually became our biggest profit driver. In a world of volatility and uncertainty, trust is the most valuable currency. The decision to do things the right way—getting the tax logic perfect and being transparent about what we could and couldn’t do—made users stay with us. Our churn dropped, and our referral rate skyrocketed.
That taught me that high profits aren’t a reward for cutting corners. They are the long-term result of building a product people rely on when their neck is on the line with the IRS. If you lose your ethics, you lose your business.
Can you share one specific decision or policy where you chose the ethical path even though it appeared more expensive or risky in the short term, and what was the long-term business impact?
David Kemmerer: We decided to never sell user data to third-party marketing firms or data brokers.
In the early years, when we were still finding our footing as a startup, we were approached by several entities interested in the anonymized financial trends of crypto users. From a purely short-term, cold-hearted business perspective, that’s essentially free money. It could have funded our entire engineering team for a year without us having to raise a dime or sell a single subscription.
However, we knew that our users were coming to us with their most sensitive information—their wealth, their trading habits, and their tax liabilities. If we had prioritized that easy revenue, we would have compromised the relationship we were trying to build. We chose to turn down those deals and stick to a product-only revenue model, which was definitely the riskier path when capital was tight.
In the long-term, it became our greatest competitive advantage. When the crypto industry hit various waves of skepticism and regulatory crackdowns, our users knew their data was something that only they controlled. That reputation for privacy allowed us to secure partnerships with major platforms like Coinbase, Metamask , and TurboTax.
These companies have incredibly high bars for security and ethics; they never would have integrated with us if we had a history of monetizing user data. By choosing the expensive path of privacy, we built a brand that the biggest players in the industry actually trust to handle their customers.
How do you embed your core values into daily operations and decision-making without sacrificing speed, competitiveness, or profitability?
David Kemmerer: Extreme ownership and decentralization. Since we’re a fully remote team, I can’t and shouldn’t micro-manage every move. We hire people who are naturally aligned with user-centric accuracy.
When an engineer is faced with a choice between shipping a feature that’s 90% there to beat a competitor’s deadline, or spending an extra three days to ensure the tax logic handles a specific edge case correctly, they don’t need to call me. They already know the answer. We’ve built a culture where getting it right is the fastest way to grow, because fixing a bad reputation takes ten times longer than fixing a bug.
What’s the biggest pushback you’ve received from investors, board members, or stakeholders regarding your values-driven approach, and how did you handle it?
David Kemmerer: The biggest pushback usually centers on our refusal to pivot into “hyped” sectors to chase venture capital trends.
During the peak of the last bull run, there was immense pressure from some stakeholders to move CoinLedger into becoming a decentralized exchange (DEX) or a yield-farming platform. The argument was simple: “The multiples on those companies are 10x higher than a tax and accounting tool. You’re sitting on all this user data—why not let them trade directly on your platform and take a commission?”
From a growth at all costs perspective, they were right. It would have looked incredible on a pitch deck for a Series B. I handled it by going back to our core identity: Neutrality.
I explained that the moment we become a marketplace where we’re incentivized to have users trade more, we lose our status as the independent auditor. If we started acting like an exchange, we would become a competitor to our biggest partners, Coinbase and Kraken, and we’d lose the trust of the users who rely on us for unbiased reporting.
I showed them our long-term churn data. Users stick with us because we are a utility, not a casino. Eventually, the board saw that while the “hype” companies were crashing during the market downturn, our revenue stayed consistent because people need tax and accounting tools regardless of whether the market is up or down. We chose stability and trust over a temporary valuation spike, and it’s the reason we’re still here today while many of those pivoted companies are gone.
For other CEOs who want to build a values-driven yet highly profitable company, what is the one practical piece of advice you would give them to get started?
David Kemmerer: It’s easy to have high standards when things are going well. Your values are only real if they cost you something. Sit down with your co-founders and decide exactly what you will never do to make a buck—whether that’s selling user data, cutting corners on security, or sacrificing employee well-being for a short-term deadline.
Once you have those Non-Negotiables, bake them into your hiring process and your product roadmap immediately. If you wait until you’re big enough to care about ethics, the momentum of growth will have already added bad habits into your company’s DNA.
