Kraken has run continuously since 2011 and reports more than 10 million verified clients across 190 plus countries. It is operated by Payward, Inc., a San Francisco company, and it is one of the few crypto exchanges to hold both a US money transmitter footprint and a US bank charter. That combination makes it a useful case study in how a long standing exchange handles regulation and custody.
Kraken is the trading name of Payward, Inc., founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell. In the United States it registers as a Money Services Business with FinCEN and, through its New York entity, holds a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services. In the United Kingdom it is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as a cryptoasset firm, and it holds analogous registrations with AUSTRAC in Australia and FINTRAC in Canada. A separate subsidiary, Kraken Financial, received a Special Purpose Depository Institution charter from the Wyoming Division of Banking in 2020, making Kraken the first crypto company to hold a US bank charter.
The European picture is still moving. Kraken has pursued authorisation under the EU's MiCA framework through Ireland, and as of early 2026 full MiCA compliance was not yet confirmed. Traders in the EU should check the local entity and the current passport status before assuming full coverage.
One point worth clearing up: Kraken has no native token. Pages that mention a "Kraken token" or "KRAK" are mistaken, and no exchange token is required to pay fees or to use the platform.
The New York BitLicense is among the strictest crypto standards in the United States, demanding capital, cyber security and anti money laundering controls that many platforms decline to meet. Holding it places Kraken in a small group, and the Wyoming charter goes further by letting the entity take customer deposits under state banking law rather than merely custodying them.
Kraken states that it keeps the large majority of client crypto, often quoted at more than 95 percent, in air gapped cold storage that is not connected to the internet. Client funds are segregated from company operating capital, and the firm carries an insurance policy placed through Lloyd's of London that covers parts of the custody stack. Those are meaningful controls, and they sit above what many offshore exchanges provide.
The firm also publishes a Proof of Reserves program that lets users cryptographically verify that their balance is included in the total backing client assets. Independent attestations are useful, but they are not the same as a statutory audit of the whole balance sheet, and they cover crypto rather than any fiat held.
The gap is compensation. Crypto held at Kraken is not covered by the UK's Financial Services Compensation Scheme, the US SIPC, or equivalent retail investor schemes. If the exchange failed, holders of crypto would rank as general creditors rather than insured depositors, which is a different risk profile from a bank deposit.
User side controls matter too. Kraken supports a 2 step login, withdrawal address whitelisting and a Global Settings Lock that freezes account changes for a set window. Enabling them reduces the chance that a single stolen password drains the account, and they are worth switching on before funding.
Kraken uses a maker taker model on its Pro spot venue. Makers, who add liquidity, pay less than takers, who remove it, and both rates fall as the trailing 30 day volume rises. The bands below reflect the published Kraken Pro spot schedule and should be confirmed on the official fee page, because they change.
| 30 day volume (USD) | Maker | Taker |
|---|---|---|
| up to 50,000 | 0.16% | 0.26% |
| 50,000 to 100,000 | 0.14% | 0.24% |
| 100,000 to 250,000 | 0.12% | 0.22% |
| 250,000 to 500,000 | 0.10% | 0.20% |
| 500,000 to 1,000,000 | 0.08% | 0.18% |
| over 10,000,000 | 0.00% | 0.10% |
The headline trading fee is only part of the cost. Spreads widen on thin pairs, and deposits or withdrawals can carry network or processing charges that vary by asset and rail. A user moving stablecoins on a congested network can pay more in gas than in commission, and the simpler "buy" interface typically adds a spread of about 0.9 percent to 1.5 percent on top of the Pro rates shown above.
Margin and futures carry their own schedule, with leverage limits that differ by jurisdiction and by product. Kraken Futures offers leveraged derivatives, and the limits tighten where local rules require it, so the same contract can trade with different caps depending on the client's country.
Kraken runs a staking and yield program covering a set of proof of stake assets such as ETH, SOL, ADA and DOT. Availability is not global: US customers lost the staking as a service program in 2023 after a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, so the same product menu does not exist in every country. Always read the local terms before assuming a yield is on offer.
Beyond crypto, Kraken Securities LLC, a FINRA and SIPC member, offers stocks and exchange traded funds to clients in most US states, while tokenized equities have been offered to non US customers since 2025. The brokerage arm and the crypto arm sit under different regulatory shields, which is why the protections differ by product and why a stock holding carries a SIPC ceiling near 500,000 dollars that crypto does not.
The asset list itself shifts by region. A token listed for a client in one jurisdiction may be unavailable to a client in another, and these differences are applied at login rather than advertised on the homepage.
Kraken is not unscathed by regulators. In 2023 it agreed to pay around 30 million dollars to the SEC to resolve claims about its US staking program, and it has faced scrutiny from several agencies over the years. These outcomes are public record and matter for an honest risk picture, even though the core exchange has avoided a major breach.
The practical lesson is that a licensed exchange can still change its product set under regulatory pressure. A feature available today may be withdrawn in a specific region tomorrow, and the user, not the marketing page, carries the adjustment cost.
Crypto at Kraken carries no government backed compensation, so the loss of the platform would not be made whole by a public fund. Regional rules also restrict which tokens and which leverage levels a given user can touch, and those limits are enforced at the account level rather than advertised up front.
Liquidity is deep on majors such as BTC and ETH but thinner on long tail altcoins, where slippage can bite on larger orders.
Phishing remains the most common real world loss, not exchange failure. Clone sites mimic the login page, and support impersonators ask for codes that the real Kraken would never request. Bookmark the real domain and refuse to share secrets.
The durable risks are price volatility, leverage and custodial concentration, not the brand name. Size positions to what you can absorb, keep withdrawal addresses whitelisted, and verify every claim against the official sources rather than a summary like this one.