Engagement metrics guide Kraken expansion
Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Kraken, on building the Nasdaq of crypto
The strategic point is that Kraken is deciding what to build by watching customer behavior before revenue shows up. On an exchange, engagement is not a soft metric, it is visible in deposits, trading frequency, send and receive activity, API usage, and which workflows people repeat. That matters because Kraken is expanding from a trading venue into a broader financial stack, where early usage signals tell it whether a new remittance, yield, or pro trading product is becoming part of a customer’s routine.
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This fits Kraken’s platform model. The exchange is the base layer, then Kraken adds separate apps for pro traders, consumers, and money movement on top. In that setup, engagement data shows which surfaces are becoming durable products versus one off experiments.
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It also matches Kraken’s customer mix. Kraken says it is built around professional traders and institutions, and its 2024 ARPU of $2,023 was far above Coinbase at $825 and Robinhood at $164. High value users reveal product market fit through repeated workflow depth, not just account count.
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The broader pattern shows up in software too. Equals tracks whether finance teams live in the product every day, because repeated usage across a clear workflow is often the leading indicator that a horizontal tool can grow into a large business. Kraken is applying that same logic to crypto financial services.
Going forward, this kind of measurement will shape which crypto products graduate from feature to business line. As Kraken pushes deeper into stablecoin payments, DeFi access, and region specific financial workflows, the winners will be the products customers come back to weekly or daily, long before they become major revenue contributors.