History
Founding and early development (2011–2013)
Kraken was founded in 2011 in San Francisco by Thanh Luu, Michael Gronager, and Jesse Powell, [4] [5] the latter of whom had previously founded an internet gaming startup. [6] Powell was a consultant for Mt. Gox in resolving a security issue, and began working on Kraken as a replacement, anticipating its death; Gox did collapse in 2014, failing security audits. [6] [5] In September 2013, Kraken was launched, offering Bitcoin, Litecoin, and euro trades initially before going on to add additional currencies and margin trading. [7]
Expansion and acquisitions (2014–2017)
In March 2014, Kraken received a $5 million Series A investment from Hummingbird Ventures and Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. [8] [9] A month later, Kraken became one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal. [10] The same year, Kraken was chosen to assist with the investigation of lost bitcoins of Mt. Gox; the bankruptcy trustees relied upon Kraken due to its proven operating history without being breached by hackers. [11] In June 2015, Kraken opened the first dark pool for bitcoins. [12]
In January 2016, Kraken purchased Coinsetter and Cavirtex, an exchange based out of New York City. [13] With the purchase, clients automatically had accounts transferred over to Kraken. [14] A month later, Kraken announced the completion of its Series B round of investment, led by the SBI Group; the company also acquired Dutch exchange CleverCoin, [15] and Glidera, a cryptocurrency wallet service. [16] In March 2017, Kraken acquired Cryptowatch, a charting and trading platform. [17] By December 2017, Kraken claimed to be registering up to 50,000 new users a day. [18]
Global operations and product development (2018–2023)
In April 2018, Kraken announced closure of its services in Japan due to the rising costs of doing business; [19] the company returned to the Japanese market in 2020. [20] In February 2019, Kraken acquired Crypto Facilities, a British derivatives trading firm. [21] In June 2019, Kraken received $13.5 million from 2,263 individual investors via a special-purpose vehicle. [22]
In September 2020, Kraken was granted a special purpose depository institution (SPDI) charter in Wyoming, [23] becoming the first cryptocurrency exchange to hold such a charter in the United States. [24] In early 2021, Kraken sought additional funding from investors at a valuation of over $20 billion, with Tribe Capital becoming the company's second largest institutional investor behind Hummingbird Ventures and Arjun Sethi being appointed to the board of directors. [25]
In January 2021, Kraken released a mobile app for international users, which became available in the US in June 2021. [26] In September 2022, Dave Ripley – then chief operating officer –replaced Powell who became chairman of Kraken's board of directors. [27] In November 2022, the company launched a beta version of its non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. [28]
In February 2023, Kraken shut down its operations in Japan for the second time, and in the United Arab Emirates, less than a year after securing a license in the region. [29] [20]
In June 2023, Kraken's NFT marketplace officially launched out of beta testing, with the option for users to pay for listings via fiat or cryptocurrency. [30] In September 2023, Bloomberg reported that Kraken planned to trade outside cryptocurrency for the first time, by offering trading in US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds. [31]
Kraken gained a foothold in Europe during 2023 by adding virtual asset service provider (VASP) licenses in Ireland, Italy, and Spain. [32] Later that year, the company announced plans to acquire Coin Meester B.V. (BCM), a Netherlands-based crypto exchange, as part of its regional growth strategy. [32]
Diversification (2024–present)
In March 2024, Kraken introduced a dedicated division for institutional clients, Kraken Institutional, target hedge funds and ETF issuers. [33] Shortly after the launch, they also released the Kraken Wallet, a multi-chain crypto wallet supporting eight blockchains. [34]
In March 2025, Kraken announced that it would acquire NinjaTrader, a retail futures trading platform, for $1.5 billion in an effort to expand into multiple asset classes and grow its user base. [35]
In October 2025, Kraken announced that it acquired the Small Exhange from IG Group. Previously, IG Group had acquired the exchange from Foris DAX Markets (parent company of Crypto.com) in April 2023, after which it was sold to Kraken. The exchange was originally co-founded in 2019 by Tom Sosnoff and Matt Hulsizer and Jenny Just. [36]
Controversies
Government regulator investigations
Kraken formally left the New York jurisdiction in August 2015, citing in part the state's BitLicense. [37] In April 2018, Kraken declined a request for information by the New York Attorney General's Office, which was studying the measures taken by cryptocurrency exchanges to protect customers from market manipulation and money laundering. In its refusal, Kraken cited costs associated with compiling the information, also noting it had left the New York market due to the state being "hostile" to crypto. [38] Later that year, the New York attorney general released a report suggesting "customers would do well to avoid platforms" that hadn't contributed to the report, as the platforms could be violating New York law, and referred Kraken, along with Binance and Gate.io, to New York State Department of Financial Services for potential violation of local virtual currency regulations. [37] [39]
After Kraken self-reported potential violations, in March 2019 the exchange was investigated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control for potential violation of sanction-regimes by allowing trade with customers based in Iran. A settlement was reached in November 2022, with Kraken paying a fine of $362,000 and agreeing to "invest an additional $100,000 in certain sanctions compliance controls." [40] In late September 2021, Kraken agreed to pay a fine of $1.25 million to settle claims by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it had offered unregistered margin trading. [41]
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) initiated civil proceedings in 2023 against Bit Trade, Kraken's operator in Australia, for "failing to comply" with margin trading rules. [42] In August 2024, Australia's Federal Court ordered Bit Trade [43] to pay a A$8 million ($5.1 million) fine for incorrectly issuing a credit facility to 1,100 customers. [42]
In February 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) categorized Kraken's staking service as an illegal sale of securities. [44] Kraken agreed to a $30-million settlement without admitting or denying the allegations, and agreed to cease offering its staking service in the US. Its international staking services stayed in place. [45]
The SEC sued Kraken in November 2023 in the case SEC v Payward Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 23-06003. [46] The SEC alleged that Kraken had been operating as a securities exchange without registering as such. [47] Kraken was also accused of mixing customer assets with its own funds, [48] which Kraken denied. [46] Kraken argued that they did not list securities and there was no US law requiring the registration of crypto exchanges. [49] The SEC agreed to drop the lawsuit in March 2025, no longer seeking to regulate the company as a stock exchange. [50]
Identifying Glassdoor reviewers
In May 2019, Kraken filed a motion in California's Marin County Superior Court attempting to identify ten anonymous reviewers on Glassdoor. [51] [52] Kraken wanted to sue them for allegedly breaching their severance contract. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, saying it represented the anonymous reviewers, claimed in 2020 that identifying the reviewers would harm their First Amendment free-speech rights and have a chilling effect on the expression of others. [53] In 2022, the court ordered Glassdoor to disclose the real identity of some reviewers. [5]
Work culture and layoffs
In 2019, Powell suggested that parenting was a distraction to being productive and critiqued the economic viability of parental leaves; he went on to question whether choosing to not abide by relevant governmental regulations was a risk worth taking. [40] In June 2022, Powell urged employees in a work meeting to reject the usage of preferred gender pronouns; he then opened a Slack channel to debate whether people should be allowed to choose their gender but not their race or ethnicity. [5] The next day, Kraken released a "culture document" which outlined the libertarian values that it asserted were to be obeyed at work. [5] Among other things, employees were prohibited from labelling others' comments as "toxic, hateful, racist", etc., and particular emphasis was assigned on how "offensiveness" was not forbidden. [5] Powell and his fellow executives encouraged employees who disagreed with the policy to quit, and offered four months' severance for those who opted to do so. [5] [54]
In November 2022, Kraken laid off about 1,100 employees –approximately 30 percent of its workforce. [55] In October 2024, Kraken laid off around 400 employees, accounting for 15% of its workforce, as part of a corporate restructuring which added Arjun Sethi as co-CEO. [56]
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