Kraken Exchange Report

Key Insights

• Kraken’s spot exchange averaged $1.07 billion in monthly trading volume, higher than its own perps exchange.

• Kraken began the year with Open Interest (OI) at $376.01 million but experienced a dip to $227.45 million during the February 6 crash.

• Kraken holds $14.36 billion in reserves, experiencing a slight decline throughout 2026.

• 66/147 of Kraken’s new listings in 2026 were RWA / xStocks related, reflecting the exchange’s new focus on tokenized assets.

• The top 20 trading pairs contribute 82.0% of the exchange’s trading volume. Fiat/Crypto trading pairs make up 93.1% of the top 20 trading volume.

• Perps trading pairs are heavily concentrated towards the top 6 perp contracts (BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, ZEC, DOGE), representing 86.9% of all perps trading volume.

• All of Kraken's 2026 top 15 best performing assets gave >100% returns. Notably, 2 xStocks tickers make the list (INTCx and AZNx).

• Kraken’s adjusted revenue has tripled from $0.7 billion in 2023 to $2.2 billion in 2025 with $531 million in EBITDA in 2025.

• Kraken’s heightened level of transparency for a private company is likely motivated by their ambitions to go public to which Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said that the company was ~80% ready as of May 6, 2026.

Volume and OI trend (2026 January - April)

Kraken’s spot exchange averaged $1.07 billion in trading volume for the first four months of the year from 2026 January to April, with a clear drop off in activity on weekends compared to weekdays. Weekday volume averaged $1.26 billion, while weekends saw a -52.0% drop off to average $0.60 billion. 

Surprisingly, Kraken’s perps exchange recorded less volume compared to its spot exchange, with only $0.68 billion in average daily trading volume over the same period of time. Perps trading also exhibited the same weekday / weekend pattern, with weekdays averaging $0.75 billion, dropping to $0.48 billion on weekends (-37.0%). 

The highest trading volume day was recorded on February 5, as BTC suffered a drastic decline from $73.1k to its yearly-low of $62.8k (-14.1%) within 24 hours. This was accompanied by a broader crypto market decline across all assets. Spot trading volume surged to a yearly high of $3.51 billion, while perps volume also spiked to $2.52 billion. 

From a perps open interest (OI) perspective, Kraken started the year with $376.01 million. While it dipped to as low as $227.45 million on February 6, it has since recovered to $320.06 million currently, displaying a degree of resilience and stickiness. 

Exchange reserves

Token reserves on Kraken experienced a slight decline throughout the first four months of the year, falling by -5.1% in USD value from $15.13 billion on January 1, 2026 to $14.36 billion on May 1, 2026. 

While the exchange’s BTC reserve remained largely stable in both quantity and USD value, the main declines came from its ETH and Stablecoin reserves. ETH reserves saw net outflows of -21.4% (87.1k ETH), but coupled with the decline in the price of ETH, saw a decline of $487.4 million in value. Stablecoin reserves also declined by -43.4% from $750.6 million to $424.6 million.

Latest listings

Kraken listed a total of 147 new tokens for spot trading from January - April 2026. Close to half (66/147) of new listings were RWA / xStocks related, reflecting the exchange’s new focus on tokenized assets. However the trading volume of these assets still remains small. 

Certain notable listings during this period include $AZTEC, $CFX, $HYPE, $MEGA, $PI, and $RAIN. Notably, Kraken has also started to list exchange tokens from rival exchanges, such as $WBT, $OKB, $BGB, and $HSK.

From a perps perspective, only 16 new contracts were introduced during this period of time. Similar to spot, almost half of these listings (7/16) were RWA / xStocks related, focused on popular tech stocks such as NVDA, HOOD, MSTR, AAPL, and GOOGL. This marked the debut of equities perps on Kraken.

Most traded pairs

On average, the Top 20 pairs on Kraken’s spot exchange make up the lion’s share of activity between January - April 2026, contributing 82.0% of trading volume towards the exchange. As a regulated exchange, crypto/fiat pairs, particularly pairs with USD and EUR base, dominate trading volume. USD pairs contribute 65.6% of Top 20 trading volume, while EUR contributes 27.5%. Surprisingly stablecoin-target pairs only make up 5.9% of the Top 20 trading volume. The exchange also functions as a regulated offramp channel for stablecoins, with 5 of the Top 20 being stablecoin/fiat pairs, e.g. USDC/USD, USDT/EUR.

Amongst crypto pairs, it is no surprise that the two majors BTC, ETH make up the majority of trading volume. BTC contributes slightly less than a third (28.9%) of trading volume amongst the Top 20 pairs, with ETH at 10.5%. Altcoins that make the list for the Top 20 include XRP (4.5%), SOL (4.1%), ZEC (1.0%), SUI (0.9%), and DOGE (0.9%), reflecting trader interest on the spot exchange. 

On the perps side, the concentration amongst the top pairs is a lot more stark. The Top 6 perp contracts (BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, ZEC, DOGE) already make up 86.9% of all perps trading volume from January - April 2026. Only the top 6 broke above $1 billion in trading volume over the four months. Notably this list of perp contracts matches the top traded crypto pairs on the spot market, with SUI in 8th place. 

Zooming out slightly to the Top 20 pairs reveals a volume contribution of 95.0%. Alts such as ADA, TAO, PEPE, AVAX, XAUT, BNB, WIF, HYPE, DASH, LINK, NEAR, FARTCOIN, XMR, make the Top 20, exhibiting a mix of Layer-1, AI, Memecoins, DeFi, and Privacy Coins. A notable addition amongst the list is XAUT (Tether Gold), reflecting the surging crypto interest in gold. However BTC still make up the majority of trading volume with 53.7% share of the Top 20 perp contracts, with traders’ preference for the orange coin clearly growing throughout the past four months.  

BTC’s dominance over Kraken’s perps contracts is more apparent through its OI, with between 50% - 60% share of OI across the first four months of the year. This is followed by ETH (~15 - 20% OI share), SOL (~5 - 10% OI share), and XRP (~3 - 5% OI share). Notably XAUT, while #12 in volume share, is #5 in OI share amongst the Top 20 contracts, with as much as 4.8% in OI share. 

Best performing spot assets

The Top 15 best performing assets on Kraken’s spot exchange all gave returns >100% in the first four months of 2026. The Top 15 had a good mix of tokens from different categories, though there were some clear themes such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as Infrastructure projects. Only 2 meme tokens made the list, a sign of the category’s depressed performance thus far despite its relative popularity amongst retail traders. 

Notably, 2 xStocks tickers make the list - Intel (INTCx) and Astra Zeneca (AZNx) - outperforming significant swaths of crypto assets. Both stocks benefitted from strong positive news that drove their share price to near all-time highs. 

Historical revenue (2023 - 2025)

At the start of 2025, Kraken began reporting financial results for the exchange on their blog, an unprecedented level of transparency for a private company and crypto exchange. The move was likely motivated by its ambition to go public in the near future, and gives potential investors an early look into their revenue track record. 

Payward / Kraken has managed to record strong growth over the most recent bull cycle, with adjusted revenue more than tripling from $0.7B in 2023 to $2.2B in 2025, with strong QoQ performance throughout 2024 - 2025. The company also flipped profitable from -$77M in 2023 to $531M in EBITDA in 2025. While a significant part of this revenue growth has been driven by trading volumes on Kraken, several major acquisitions in 2025 (discussed more below) also contributed to top and bottom line growth. Moving forward as Kraken transitions to a broader Fintech platform under the Payward banner, it will be interesting to see which verticals contribute to further growth for the group, especially as trading activity begins to tail off for Kraken.

Latest developments 

It is no secret that Kraken has been preparing for a blockbuster US IPO for a while, and has been on a significant acquisition and expansion spree. Major acquisitions include NinjaTrader ($1.5B, Mar 2025), Small Exchange ($100M, Oct 2025), Backed Finance (Dec 2025, valuation undisclosed), and the most recent Bitnomial ($550M, May 2026) and Reap Technologies ($600M, May 2026).

The acquisitions combined give Kraken end-to-end capabilities and regulatory licenses across futures and derivatives trading in the US, RWA / stock tokenization, as well as now stablecoin payments capability and licenses in Asia. Notably, Payward Financial was also the first major crypto institution to acquire a “skinny” Fed Master Account on March 4, 2026. The announcement was a bombshell amongst the banking community, and seen as a huge step forward for crypto policy.  

In addition to significant M&A activity, Kraken also secured significant pre-IPO funding in November 2025, raising $800 million and valuing the company at $20 billion. The round include major investors such as Citadel Securities, Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, Apollo Global Management, Tribe Capital, Qube Research & Technologies, and HSG (HongShan Capital Group, ex-Sequoia Capital China). Later in April 2026, Deutsche Bourse also acquired a 1.5% stake in the company for $200 million.

While rumors of an IPO have been circulating since 2025, the process has not been completely smooth sailing. It was reported that Payward, Kraken’s parent company, had confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the U.S. SEC in November 2025. However in February 2026 the company fired its CFO amidst a broader management reshuffle. On March 18 it was reported that the company had put its IPO plans on hold indefinitely due to market conditions. However by May 6, 2026 Co-CEO Arjun Sethi reportedly said that the company was ~80% ready to go public.