Kraken (company)

In 2011, founder Jesse Powell visited the offices of cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox following that company's 2011 security breach.[10] Powell told Bloomberg News he began working on Kraken as a replacement for Mt. Gox if that company were to permanently close, which it did in 2014.[11]

In September 2013, Kraken launched after two years of testing and development. The exchange initially offered bitcoin, litecoin, and euro trades. Additional currencies and margin trading was later added.[12]

In July 2013, Kraken joined other U.S. American bitcoin players in the emerging payments and digital currency industry to form the Committee for the Establishment of the Digital Asset Transfer Authority (DATA). The stated aim of the committee was to establish DATA as the future self-regulatory body of the industry.[13][14][15][16][17][18][19] DATA held its first annual meeting in April 2014.[20][21][22]

In October 2013, Kraken formed an exclusive partnership with BaFin regulated Fidor bank. Fidor provides Single European Payments Area (SEPA) payments for depositing and withdrawing from Kraken accounts.

In October 2013, Kraken announced that it had discovered major flaws in the Namecoin protocol and would not list the cryptocurrency until they were removed. Former Kraken COO Michael Gronager, during the security analysis for onboarding the new cryptocurrencies, spotted a major vulnerability in the domain registration system and a bug that left .bit domain names susceptible to attacks and reassignment. Although the flaws were soon fixed and Namecoin was listed on the Kraken exchange, it was delisted two years later after a decline in its trading volumes.

In March 2014, Kraken received a US$5 million Series A investment led by Hummingbird Ventures. Other investors included Trace Mayer and Barry Silbert (Bitcoin Opportunity Fund).[23][24][25]

In April 2014, Kraken became one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal.[26][27][28][29][30]

In July 2014, Kraken was part of a group of businesses that advised Mineyuki Fukuda (who was a member of the Japanese parliament at the time) and his IT committee on forming the Japan Authority of Digital Assets (JADA). JADA is the first Bitcoin regulatory body with government backing.[31][32]

In May 2015, Kraken announced the beta launch of margin trading, becoming one of the few bitcoin exchanges to offer trading on margin. Initially the maximum allowed leverage for trading long or short was 3x (later raised to 5x).[33]

In May 2015, it was announced that Howard Bernstein had joined Kraken as Chief Compliance Officer. Bernstein has 20 years of experience in US financial regulation, including Merriman Capital Inc, where he helped to ensure that the publicly traded investment bank was compliant with SEC and FINRA requirements.[34]

In June 2015, Kraken opened a bitcoin pool of Dark liquidity (or “dark pool”).[35]

After its public refusal, Kraken expressed an intention to return service to New York residence pending the removal of what it perceived as unfair and counterproductive licensing. Coinsetter, announced to clients in December 2015 that it would thenceforth impose a $65 fee to offset the cost of the very same BitLicense Kraken refused to afford. In absorbing Coinsetter, and by extension Cavirtex, the following month, Kraken opened up its platform to residents of 37 other states, and to all Canadian residents. Alongside this deal, Kraken announced partnerships with payment providers SynapsePay in the U.S. and Vogogo in Canada, in order to provide its newest clients with access to fiat deposits and withdrawals respectively.

One month later, Kraken announced the completion of its Series B round of investment lead by SBI Investment, a prominent Japanese venture capitalist firm under SBI Holdings. Following this investment round, Kraken announced two major acquisitions that year: Dutch exchange CleverCoin, which was acquired in June,[36] and Glidera, a cryptocurrency wallet service allowing users to directly fund Glidera bank accounts with fiat for the purchase of cryptocurrencies on the Kraken exchange.

Kraken's reputation for security was challenged amidst 2016's buildout of partnerships and acquisitions. Multiple claims emerged in the latter half of July via news media and social networks that clients’ accounts had been compromised and funds stolen.

As Kraken went silent reportedly for investigation, users threatened to alert and petition the FBI's Cyber Crimes Division for redress. Within a month, Kraken presented clarification that ‘Kraken’ was never compromised; that is, after internal investigation, the security team reached the conclusion that Kraken systems, servers, and databases were not accessed by malicious attackers due to any identifiable vulnerability for which they would be responsible.

The company attributed affected users’ missing funds to phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks, and stressed the importance of enabling Kraken websites security features, such as two-factor authentication for withdrawals or the Global Settings Lock to restrict unfamiliar IP access. In the aftermath of the hack that wasn't, Kraken asserted recognition of their continued responsibility to protect clients, and stressed equally so, the client's responsibility in protecting him- or herself.

In April 2017, according to reports, Kraken launched fiat funding options to transfer denominated US dollars and government-issued currencies.

Throughout 2017, the Kraken exchange suffered from DDoS attacks and performance issues. In November 2017, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell apologized for the site issues, but praised security, citing its impeccable record.

Not long after Monero was listed Kraken continued to list additional crypto-currencies in the following months, such as USDT, MLN and Dash.[37] In March Kraken acquired popular website Cryptowatch a real time charting site for crypto-currencies that is often used by day traders. During the acquisition they also hired the founder of Cryptowatch Artur Sapek to help integrate Cryptowatch into Krakens systems and further the development of the platform.[38][39]

In August Kraken listed Bitcoin Cash a hard-fork of Bitcoin with all clients that held bitcoin before the fork receiving an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash.[40]

In December it has been reported that Kraken was registering up to 50,000 new users a day.[41]

On 10 January 2018, Kraken suspended trading for over 48 hours while it performed an upgrade which was intended to take only 2 hours. Since first opening in 2011, this was the longest interruption to service.[42]

In April 2018, Kraken announced the closing of its services in Japan, after operating since October 2014, by the end of June due to the rising costs of doing business there.[43]

in February, 2019, Kraken announced that it had raised US$100 million in a direct offering to its largest customers at a $4 billion valuation.[44]

In February 2019, Kraken added cryptocurrency futures trading.

In May 2019, Kraken filed a motion in California's Marin County Superior Court to identify ten anonymous reviewers on Glassdoor[45][46][47]. Kraken is suing the ten reviewers, claiming they are former employees in breach of their severance contract. The EFF, which represents the anonymous reviewers, claims that identifying the reviewers would harm their first amendment speech rights and chill the speech of others[48].

In June 2019, Kraken received US$13.5 million from 2,263 individual investors via a BnkToTheFuture special purpose vehicle.[49]