Kraken building Nasdaq-style crypto backend
Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Kraken, on building the Nasdaq of crypto
This points to Kraken turning exchange liquidity into financial plumbing. Serving merchants, enterprise businesses, and banks means packaging the core exchange into products that let a business accept stablecoins, convert them into local currency, move money across borders, hold dollar balances, and access custody and yield without stitching together separate brokers, wallets, banks, and payment processors.
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For merchants, the product is not a trading screen. It is checkout, settlement, treasury, and payout tools. A seller needs to take in USDT or USDC, convert when needed, and pay suppliers or employees. Kraken already frames this stack around send and receive, on and off ramps, and payroll style functions built on exchange rails.
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For enterprises, productization means APIs and workflow specific apps. Kraken already runs separate products for professional traders, consumers, and money movement, and emphasizes a services architecture instead of one app for everyone. That is how an exchange becomes infrastructure for fintechs, exporters, and global businesses.
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For banks and larger institutions, the closest comparable is Gemini, which built custody, compliance, and low fee institutional trading for hedge funds and banks. Kraken is pushing from the other direction, starting with deeper pro trading liquidity, bank charter style capabilities, and stablecoin rails, then layering banking and custody services on top.
The next step is a broader hybrid between exchange, bank, and payments platform. If Kraken keeps building products around stablecoin settlement and regulated custody, it can become the default backend for businesses that want dollar accounts, cross border transfers, and crypto market access in one stack, especially outside the U.S. banking core.