Kraken (legally named Payward, Inc.) is a US-based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. It is the first cryptocurrency company to obtain a bank charter. In 2025, Kraken began allowing the trading of tokenized equities by non-US customers.
By 2025, it had $207 billion in quarterly trading volume and was ranked the world's fourteenth-largest crypto exchange. Beyond cryptocurrencies, in most US states the exchange also facilitates the trading of stocks, futures, and ETFs.
Kraken was founded in 2011 in San Francisco by Thanh Luu, Michael Gronager, and Jesse Powell, the latter of whom had previously founded an internet gaming startup. Before co-founding Kraken, in 2011 Powell consulted for Mt. Gox, an early bitcoin exchange in Japan, to help it recover from a hacking attack. After observing a number of security issues at Mt. Gox, Powell began working on an alternative exchange with security controls as its foundation. Kraken was co-founded in July 2011, with Payward as its parent company. Kraken then launched publicly in September 2013, initially offering bitcoin, Litecoin, and euro trades before adding additional currencies and margin trading.
In March 2014, Kraken received a $5 million series A investment from Hummingbird Ventures and Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. A month later, Kraken became one of the first bitcoin exchanges to have its data included on Bloomberg Terminal. The Mt. Gox crypto exchange went bankrupt in 2014 after a security breach, and in the following two months Kraken's user base grew by 50%. Due to avoiding security breaches, Kraken was chosen by the Mt. Gox bankruptcy trustees to assist with liquidating the company, investigating lost bitcoins, and helping pay back creditors.
