Sacra estimates that Kraken generated $2.2B of revenue in 2025, growing 33% year-over-year from $1.7B in 2024.

Kraken primarily monetizes through transaction fees, with total platform transaction volume in 2025 hitting $2B, up 34% YoY.

Funded accounts increased to 5.7 million in 2025, while assets on platform grew to $48.2 billion. In 2024, assets on platform totaled $43.5B with 3.8M funded accounts, up from $23.0B and 3.1M accounts in 2023.

Adjusted EBITDA reached $530.6M in 2025, representing +26% YoY growth. This compares to $420.7M in 2024 and $(76.5)M in 2023, marking a significant improvement in profitability over the past two years.

Implied 2025 adjusted EBITDA margin was approximately 24%, consistent with a business increasingly benefiting from scale across trading volume and funded account growth.

In November 2025, Kraken reached a $20 billion valuation after an $800 million funding round, with participants including Apollo, Oppenheimer, Jane Street, HSG, DRW, Tribe Capital, and the family office of Arjun Sethi. Separately, Kraken secured a $200 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities at the same $20 billion valuation.

In September 2025, Kraken raised $500 million at a $15 billion valuation from investors including Jane Street, DRW, HSG, Oppenheimer, Tribe Capital, and the family office of Arjun Sethi.

Including these rounds, Kraken's total primary funding now stands at approximately $1.5 billion, up from $27 million raised prior to 2025.

Founded in 2011, Kraken launched its crypto exchange in 2013, finding product-market fit as the only place to buy and sell Bitcoin with euros—revenue grew from about $160M in 2017 to $2B in 2021 as total Bitcoin trading volume rose from $53B to $625B.

The exchange officially launched to the public in September 2013, initially offering trading for Bitcoin, Litecoin, euro, and US dollar. The exchange now serves over 9 million users across 190+ countries. While Europe remains Kraken's largest market, it has expanded significantly in North America and is growing in regions like Japan, Australia, and the UAE.

Kraken's consumer experience on iOS enables users to buy from across 70+ cryptocurrencies with a minimum deposit of $10. On the web, Kraken offers a fully-featured order book and trading interface that can be customized by the user.

Kraken Pro achieves baseline round-trip latencies below 2ms with VPC peering and supports FIX API for both spot and futures trading. The platform features a Unified Wallet that consolidates spot, margin, and futures balances for cross-margining capital efficiency, offers leverage for margin trading up to 10x, and includes advanced order types such as OCO and FOK.

Kraken positions itself as a secure and regulation-compliant exchange. It holds 95% of deposits in air-gapped, geo-distributed cold storage and has not faced any hacking/coin theft incidents since its launch.

Kraken has expanded beyond pure crypto into multi-asset trading. For EU clients, the platform offers trading of over 60 tokenized US equities through xStocks, a Solana-based product launched in partnership with Backed Finance that enables blockchain-based certificates tracking companies like Apple, Meta, and GameStop.

The product exceeded $10 billion in combined exchange and on-chain volume within six months of launch, prompting Kraken to acquire Backed Finance AG (January 2026), fully verticalizing the xStocks platform by integrating issuance, trading, and settlement. For American users, Kraken offers commission-free trading of 11,000+ U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs following a phased rollout that began in select states (April 2025).

Kraken's core business model revolves around taking a percentage fee on each trade executed on its platform. Fees vary by trading volume and account type, with professional and institutional clients paying reduced rates based on monthly volume tiers. Kraken's average revenue per user is approximately $2,000 annually, consistent with a customer base skewing to higher-value traders relative to retail-focused competitors.

The company's revenue mix has shifted toward diversification: approximately 47% of revenue came from trading-based fees and 53% from asset-based and other revenue streams in 2024. Asset-based revenue scales with assets on platform through custody, yield, payments, and financing services.

Staking services generate yield for users, and Kraken takes a percentage of rewards, creating recurring revenue streams beyond pure trading activity. Kraken maintains a multi-collateral derivatives engine that lets users post various cryptocurrencies as margin to improve capital efficiency.

Recent acquisitions, including NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion and Small Exchange for $100 million, extend coverage into regulated U.S. futures and retail trading platforms. These moves add revenue streams that can use existing compliance and technology infrastructure.

Kraken operates as part of Payward, a unified infrastructure layer that powers multiple products including Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, and CF Benchmarks on shared global liquidity, risk management, compliance, and settlement systems.

This architecture enables near-zero marginal cost to launch additional products once core infrastructure is in place, with each new surface increasing throughput without duplicating risk, capital, or regulatory effort.

Coinbase has invested heavily in vertical integration, acquiring Deribit for $2.9 billion to add options trading and Echo for token issuance capabilities.

The public company maintains a compliance-first approach targeting institutional clients, though it lacks onshore U.S. futures offerings.

Gemini positions itself as the compliant European alternative with MiFID II licensing and USDC-settled perpetuals.

The platform focuses on regulatory arbitrage, offering institutional-grade services in jurisdictions where competitors face restrictions.

Traditional financial institutions including CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange continue expanding crypto offerings, leveraging existing regulatory relationships and institutional client bases to compete for professional trading flow.

In November 2025, SoFi launched SoFi Crypto, becoming the first nationally chartered bank in the US to offer consumer crypto trading.

Binance remains the dominant global exchange with approximately 41% market share in spot trading and 30% in derivatives despite ongoing regulatory challenges.

The platform maintains near-zero fees on major Bitcoin pairs to retain retail flow, while offering comprehensive DeFi and financial services.

OKX holds the number two position in derivatives trading with sophisticated institutional products including spread trading and cross-currency arbitrage tools.

The platform claims 60% market share in spread trading and has processed over $10 billion in institutional volume through its Liquid Marketplace.

Bybit has emerged as a fast-growing retail-focused platform, reaching number two or three in derivatives with $14.9 billion in daily volume. The exchange offers zero-fee Bitcoin trading and aggressive VIP rebate programs to attract high-volume traders.

Deribit dominates crypto options trading with deep liquidity in Bitcoin and Ethereum contracts.

FTX's collapse created opportunities for specialized derivatives platforms to capture institutional flow seeking alternatives to general-purpose exchanges.

Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and dYdX represent structural competition by eliminating custody requirements and reducing counterparty risk.

These platforms continue gaining market share, particularly for newer tokens and DeFi-native trading strategies.

Kraken's acquisition of Small Exchange provides a CFTC-licensed derivatives clearing organization, enabling fully regulated futures and options in the U.S. market. Combined with the NinjaTrader acquisition, this creates a coast-to-coast regulated derivatives infrastructure targeting the multi-trillion-dollar traditional derivatives market.

Kraken now offers U.S. regulated crypto futures for U.S. clients and MiFID-regulated futures in Europe. Kraken Pro supports CME contract trading including commodities like oil and gold. CF Benchmarks, part of the Kraken ecosystem, powered CME Group's Solana futures launch and CME's announced XRP futures through regulated reference rates.

The company's MiCA license allows passporting of custody, trading, and payment services across all 30 European Economic Area states. This regulatory foundation positions Kraken as a compliant alternative to offshore venues as institutional adoption accelerates.

Regulated derivatives represent less than 20% penetration of the broader crypto derivatives market, creating significant expansion opportunities as institutions require compliant venues for risk management and portfolio allocation.

Kraken's xStocks product enables 24/7 trading of tokenized U.S. equities and ETFs through Solana-based wrappers for European clients. The company acquired Backed Finance (January 2026), fully verticalizing the xStocks platform by integrating issuance, trading, and settlement into a single system. The platform also offers commission-free trading of 11,000 U.S. stocks and ETFs for American users, expanding from the $1 trillion crypto market into the $55 trillion global equities market.

The integration of traditional and crypto assets on a single platform creates cross-selling opportunities and increases wallet share among existing clients. Professional traders can hedge crypto positions with traditional assets while accessing extended trading hours unavailable on legacy exchanges.

Tokenized securities represent an emerging asset class that could bridge traditional finance and crypto markets, with Kraken positioned as an early mover in regulated tokenization infrastructure.

The company's white-label crypto-as-a-service offering through Kraken Embed allows neobanks and broker-dealers to add crypto trading capabilities. Kraken has expanded B2B infrastructure through Kraken Ramp, a gateway for the digital economy. Early partnerships include European neobank Bunq, demonstrating distribution potential without direct customer acquisition costs.

Banking services including payroll and treasury management for crypto-native companies represent additional revenue opportunities as the digital asset ecosystem matures and requires traditional financial infrastructure.

Regulatory crackdown: Crypto exchanges face evolving regulatory frameworks across major jurisdictions, with potential restrictions on derivatives trading, staking services, or cross-border operations. Regulatory changes could limit product offerings, increase compliance costs, or restrict access to key markets, with material impact on revenue and growth prospects.

Market concentration: The crypto exchange industry exhibits winner-take-all dynamics where liquidity attracts more liquidity, potentially allowing high-share exchanges like Binance to maintain market share despite regulatory challenges. Kraken's mid-tier position by volume could become unsustainable if institutional clients consolidate trading activity on fewer platforms.

Technology disruption: Decentralized exchanges and automated market makers continue gaining market share by eliminating custody requirements and reducing counterparty risk. If DeFi protocols achieve comparable liquidity and user experience to centralized exchanges, Kraken's business model, based on intermediating trades and holding customer assets, could face structural obsolescence.