BroadChain News, Kraken parent company Payward recently completed an $800 million funding round at a $20 billion valuation, but subsequently shelved its IPO plans. However, over the past five months, the company has secured a Federal Reserve master account, acquired derivatives clearing infrastructure, launched the world's largest tokenized equity product, and partnered with Nasdaq. Analyst Alex Weseley noted that the $20 billion valuation only reflects Kraken's identity as a "crypto exchange," while the option value of its clearing capabilities, banking license, and tokenized securities infrastructure has yet to be priced in by the market.
Kraken achieved adjusted revenue of $2.2 billion in 2025, up 33% year-over-year, with adjusted EBITDA of $531 million. The platform holds $48 billion in assets, with $2 trillion in trading volume and 5.7 million active accounts. Revenue structure has significantly diversified: trading revenue accounts for 47%, while asset-related revenue (custody, yield, payments, financing) makes up 53%. This breaks the market's stereotype of relying solely on trading fees.
Through the acquisition of Bitnomial, Kraken has obtained all three CFTC derivatives licenses in the US: DCM (exchange), DCO (clearing house), and FCM (broker). Co-CEO Arjun Sethi emphasized that clearing infrastructure determines market structure, and Bitnomial's decade-built crypto-native clearing capabilities cannot be replicated on traditional systems. Combined with the earlier acquisition of NinjaTrader (covering 2 million retail futures users), Kraken now has a vertically integrated derivatives stack from front-end to clearing.
Kraken's Wyoming SPDI bank license allows it to accept deposits, provide payment services, and assume fiduciary responsibilities, creating differentiated competition with Coinbase's recent OCC national trust charter. Although the former is a state-level license, its broader business scope paves the way for Kraken to expand into banking-like products. The market has yet to properly price these infrastructure assets, leaving significant upside potential for the $20 billion valuation.