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- [00:00]
A
Hey all this interview by Unchained executive editor Steve Ehrlich with Kraken CEO Arjun Sethi is part of our Bits and BIPS series, which now has its own podcast feed. Soon these interviews will only be available there. If you haven't yet, search for Bits and Bips, Bits, Bits, wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to subscribe. And now onto the interview mantle is pioneering Blockchain for Banking, a revolutionary new category at the intersection of TradFi and Web 3. Follow Mantel Official to learn more.
- [00:36]
B
Arjun, thanks for joining us. Really looking forward to the conversation. I want to just kind of dive right in. I know a lot of people watching and listening are going to be interested in sort of what your experience was at Kraken on Black Friday. I think we spoke about this when we met in New York a couple months ago. I spent a year working at Kraken on the marketing team and I was there during Black Thursday during the pandemic when bitcoin crashed below $4,000. And I remember all of us just frantically trying to buy Bitcoin if nothing else to go down with the ship actually run into some issues to coinbase trying to do that. But anyway, yeah, what was your experience like? I mean just seeing these mass liquidations and as well well documented issues with Binance and, and some ADL's across perp dex, etc.
- [01:29]
C
Sure. I think, I mean so, so one thing to sort of note about this is that I mean sometimes these, these events are pretty intense. Right. But I don't necessarily think they're unfamiliar. Right. You have different types of bursts in the market that can happen that are, you know, what we're ready for at any given time, which is market volatility. And so when the market moves like this, our focus at Kraken and my team's focus was just straight up, you know, what's our operational discipline? What do we need to make sure to make sure that our systems liquidity and our clients are protected? That's just, you know, bar bar none. That's like top priority. So you can kind of walk through it one by one. And we talk about this a lot, right. Which is, you know, operational resilience. What does that mean? Built Kraken and our partners are meant to handle that type of volatility spike. You have to sort of think about liquidity risk, client protection, as I mentioned. And uptime has to be always a muscle memory for everyone. It can't be just something that's like a nice to have just given how you think about traditional markets. So your risk systems have to do exactly what they're designed to do in those types of situations. Right. Like you, you think about all types of systemic risks. From a personal perspective, I've been through many of these for a long time. I guess I'm, I'm old when I think about all of the types of crashes that have happened in history. And so when you've been through multiple liquidation cycles in traditional markets and then now that we've been in multiple cycles in the early days of crypto, mid days of crypto and where we are now, I don't think you ever get numb to it, but I do think you get much more grounded, which is, you know, how do you focus on the right things, can't stress out making sure and ensuring all the teams have what they need in order to be able to support, you know, frankly, our clients across the board got consumer that are bin market, professional traders that are thinking about using the platform on any given day and that the platform is continuing to perform. And then there was a couple, you know, days and weeks after that, I got to sort of think about it, which was, I think events like this remind you why the crypto infrastructure has been built and continues to be built for these types of extremes. Right. It's transparent, it's more capital efficient and it's more robust. And I think that's actually the learning lesson in this, isn't that, hey, this was scary. Like, you know, crypto is a scary asset class. It's just that look at how much we've grown over the last 10 years and we've continued to come out stronger, faster, because everyone around the ecosystem, not just us, has prioritized at that foundation. And I think that's really key.
- [04:06]
B
Okay. One thing I was really interested to ask you because among major crypto exchanges, I think you're the only one that has co CEOs. I mean, Dave has been there for a long time and you joined more recently. But how does the dynamic between the two of you work in your leadership? How does that all work during a time of crisis when perhaps you are getting calls from panicked clients or panicked market makers wondering if some of the issues happening perhaps in the other part of the world could, could spill over onto your exchange?
- [04:35]
C
Yeah, look, the, the co CEO. You know what's funny is when we were, it was my idea when I was coming in that I wanted to have a co CEO structure and here are the reasons why. And again, I won't go into the details of that, but maybe we will is that the, the world has like become more and more complicated in some cases and the businesses that have been continuing to expand have also become more complicated. So what do I mean by that? What you've seen in Silicon Valley, which is what people trying to think of as like the epitome of like the best way to build a business, and I'm not necessarily think that's true, is that it's one product, one perspective, one marketing team and it's a set of features that are allow for your customer set. So you're actually going after one customer set, one segmentation, one product. When you think about financial services, banking and financial services, if you've looked at these businesses over the last 50 years, what do they have? They have multiple products, multiple financial products, multiple services that adhere to large constituents of customers, not just one. So even the segmentation in like a, like we say consumer, well within consumer you've got people that want to save or get yield, they want to send and receive. Within professional traders you have folks that care about certain types of trading, FX versus non FX or crypto to crypto or crypto to fiat, like the, or you know now real world assets with crypto, et cetera, et cetera. So the list kind of goes on and then you have your market makers and takers, then you have your large institutions that hold in custody and they want lending. These are all very different customers with the different importance and cases of what they care about. And so the co CEO model works for us because in my opinion all crypto companies are going to face this issue is that we operate in the intersection of technology, in markets and policy all at the same time. So it requires a lot of attention at different times. And I think those require different kinds of leadership depth. And I think depth is really important because traditionally you've got a lot of CEOs that delegate and they don't know enough of what's happening within their company in some cases. So they have like these very high level political lines and I didn't want that and I didn't want any of our leaders to have that. That was part of the change. And so having two co CE allows us to run faster and think longer term at the exact same time because we can mix and match where we need to be. And so we've divided a lot of our responsibilities around strengths, platform, product, client experience and sometimes we jump where we need to together. But the way it actually like physically looks, if I was to show you like our slack, we are in every channel Together. We're on almost all calls together. So if there isn't any, you know, day and night between us, it's like we actually know what is going on. It's actually not just between us. It's between a lot of our, what we call our pod leaders internally. And so then we have a really good understanding of, like, okay, how are we thinking about global expansion on an everyday basis? How are we thinking about regulation on an everyday basis, which is a strategy you need to course correct on an everyday basis. And so we do make a lot of these big calls together. And so what does that allow you to do? Like, a lot of people will think, oh, that's slow, because when do you connect? We're asynchronous. We're fully remote. We're talking to teams all over the world at any given time. And obviously both of us have to sleep. I'm a night owl and Dave wakes up in the morning. And so we actually just didn't get 24. 7 coverage. I work all weekends, and so does Dave with, like, you know, different teams. And so I think the key is, like, how do you get kind of continued alignment? So then you get decision velocity, cultural signal, and like a personal layer with all of these teams.
- [08:08]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm just very curious just to bring it back to Black Friday. I mean, specifically, is there anything. Any anecdote from how you guys worked through that? A lot of confusion, I'm sure. A lot of. A lot of concern among employees or just. Just partners. How did that work during a crisis?
- [08:28]
C
Yeah, I mean, look, it was a crisis for the market. It was less of a crisis for us. And as mentioned before, our systems were built. We were resilient. It was transparent. We knew what our own risk looked like, and then we were there to actually think about more. Okay, well, how do we help the other folks that might be going through some trouble at the. At the same time? Right. Because it, like, we only survive as long as our customer survives, our client survives, and the protocol survives, and any. Any of the partners in the ecosystem. So a lot of what we were doing is we're reaching out and saying, what do you guys need help with? Where do you guys have some deficits? Is that a capital thing? Is it a liquidity issue? What is it that you guys might need? And so then I think it was more about how do we make sure we continue to be good actors in the ecosystem and to make sure that the market continues to stay resilient as it comes back. And so we saw a lot of that. I actually think, like I'm just super proud of the team because I just watched the team just stay focused on the things that continue to matter and didn't let the noise get into the way of what they were doing on a day to day basis. Because again, as I mentioned before, the technology, the system, our risk management, they were all resilient. We didn't have any issues. And in fact, I would actually say this is probably the most calm I've ever seen the team, because we were already meant and built to withstand any of these types of situations.
- [09:44]
B
Great, let's pull out. Thank you for walking us through of the boots in the ground sort of situation there. Let's talk what this means for Kraken in more macro terms. I mean for one, you guys operate of Herbstacks as well. A lot of focus on sort of that particular product for a number of reasons. One, a lot of expectation is going to be the future of crypto growth as derivatives outpace spot. A hyper liquid story Aster, it's hard to ignore that. And now Robinhood, Coinbase, you guys were all competing in it. What did you learn about that product in particular and how is it going to inform your perps strategy as you expand further internationally and then in the United States?
- [10:27]
C
Do you mean our. Sorry, are you talking about our perps product that we launched like in Europe? Yeah. Not another. Okay, yeah, look, I think one thing that people kind of forget about is you need to take a step back. Like what do our, what do our customers really want at the end of the day is that they're moving their collateral to the crypto ecosystem, regardless of what that collateral may mean. Right. So we talk about btc, we talk about eth, we're now talking about tokenized equities. And so there's a lot of demand for, okay, how do I move my assets to one synonymous system. But it's also permissionless and I have access to be able to do anything I want, regardless if that's on a centralized exchange or decentralized exchange or protocol lending, so on and so forth. And so you're right, you know, derivatives, just like any other market have, is continuing to already outpace spot globally. That's not a surprise. Right. As markets mature, you know, participants move towards leverage, hedging capital efficiency, as I mentioned. And so for Kraken, that shift isn't a threat, it's just a validation of where the industry is heading and exactly where we've been continuing to invest. We've been Investing there too. Right. So I think the, the anchors to sort of look through is again structure, evolution, Kraken's positioning, that's how I think about it. Competitive edge now and moving forward and then sort of the long term vision for that. So kind of think about it. One by one spot trading built the crypto economy. Right. Derivatives professionalizes it. Every mature asset class, no matter what it is equities, commodities, FX has evolved this way. It's just more about what the timeline distinction is. So derivatives bring that stability, liquidity and price discovery just like you see in mature markets. The way we've thought about it is that we've been building these rails for many, many years and we want to get it more right than wrong. So you think about regulated futures markets, you think about perpetuals in Europe also like think about like what is real perpetuals mean versus like you know, a distorted version of it which is what some people have been trying to build. You know obviously we recently acquired a company like ironically enough it's called Small Exchange. So I was looking at the headlines, it says Kraken acquires a small Exchange but the name of the company, you.
- [12:38]
B
Got to have the capital S there and that way, no, it's a DCM and it's not, that's right, self deprecating.
- [12:46]
C
But what that allows us to do is to think about, you know, again in a, in a, in a compliant and regulated way on behalf of our clients. It's like it gives us a, you know, a CFTC regulated dcm. So it means we can meet clients wherever they trade. And I think that's really important as I'd mentioned before around how to think about one unified collateral system for multiple products, retail or institutional, spot or derivative. That's how we think about it. And look from a competitive edge standpoint, there's a lot of smart folks in the ecosystem and sometimes they're only focused on one thing versus the other. Everyone's competing on access and product breadth. I think what's more important is well, how do you safeguard your customers assets? How do you make sure that they're secure? How do you in some cases make sure it's private, it's theirs, it's their sovereign asset. We talk a lot about this, a lot. Which is what was the promise of crypto was the ownership. What's the promise of crypto is it's yours. It's not, it's not the middle individual or the middle person or the middleman that's taking it and they're going to do something with it. So having a regulated infrastructure with deep liquidity and a reputation for integrity and values I actually think is like really important. It's what matters a lot to our customers, which is why we stay in such close contact with them. Again, examples of that is like, you know, a lot of our mid market customers, our consumer customers and even our enterprise customers that we have, we're in slack threads with them, we're in telegram threads with them just to make sure that we have constant feedback around what we're doing to make the product better. And so in a derivatives driven market, that's what institutional capital in my opinion looks for is like that. Trust, integrity, reputation, deep liquidity and regulated infrastructure more than anything else. But defi gives you a really good view of what's starting to happen and what the types of innovations are happening on the edge that we have to be able to pay attention to so we can build not necessarily those products, but in that direction, which is like how do you make these products for our customers longer term where they trust what we're doing on behalf of them? And you'll see more of that to come over the next 30, 60, 90 days because we're moving at a faster and faster pace around what's happening between centralized and defi. And look long term to your question, derivatives are never going to replace spot, they're going to integrate with it, they will be larger. But I think of this as again we see a single multi asset platform where users can move seamlessly between spot, between spot plus margin futures, tokenized assets. I think that's the future that I would love to live in regardless of who I am within a customer set. That's what we're trying to build for the future.
- [15:13]
B
Yeah, and I want to talk about tokenization and some of that other stuff.
- [15:16]
C
A little bit longer.
- [15:17]
B
I have to say one thing, and I've written this publicly plenty of times in the past, even when I was back at Forbes. One of the things I really admired about Kraken's founder Jesse Powell is that even when you guys are competing with Coinbase and Binance and the likes, he always said we're an exchange, we don't necessarily want to be a wallet. And he encouraged customers to not keep assets on their wallet or on the platform that they weren't encouraging to trade. And that kind of speaks to the idea of customer trust and really kind of using exchanges for what they're meant for. To that end though, just related to perps, I mean you saw a lot of discussion about adl's and sort of kind of when it comes to treating customers equally. I know for instance, Binance came under some heat for perhaps giving Athena special privileges when it came to dec, leveraging, et cetera. I'm not going to ask you to specifically comment on a competitor, but my question to you is like, what can you say about Kraken's ADL policy when it comes to things like that? Do you have funds set aside so that you. I know derivatives are supposed to be a zero sum game, but to take on some of that risk during periods of acute market stress or kind of what learnings have you done in order to sort of help navigate an issue like this as it happens again, especially if perhaps like this time, I know it wasn't crisis for Kraken, as you said, but perhaps it could be like, what are the lessons that you've taken away from that particular aspect of this episode?
- [16:46]
C
Yeah. So I'll take a step back. So you mentioned our, our tone, our values, which Essie had, you know, started the company on. Look, we've always encouraged clients to own their own assets. It's like it's key to us. Right. If you even take a look at our cracking values, just, you know, crack think it's kraken.com values that's core to Kraken's DNA. That is not going to change. Like fairness is core to what we do now. The interpretation of that can be very different for a lot of people. And so, and like again, going back to what this is partly why I came on board from my own experiences of like do I own my assets or not? Is Jesse set the tone very early and that's going to continue to stay, which is like we are a platform for assets, a access. We're not custody dependence. I think that's really, that's like, it's a, it's a key thing that's really important. You can trade with us confidently, but you should also be empowered to self custody when you want to. We're, we're never going to stand in that way. We're not going to create a walled garden. We're not going to say you can't get access to your assets instantaneously. You should always get it. There's never going to be an excuse which is, oh well, we have these policies in place. So you know, bringing it back to now derivatives and ADL policy. And just to be clear, I'm not sure if all your listeners know that, but like, you know, auto deleveraging is essentially how people Think about it is that risk discipline is first and foremost, which is when it comes to derivatives, risk management cannot be a marketing slogan. It is definitely a marketing slogan for a lot of folks that are out there, especially unregulated venues. It's engineering. That's how you have to think about it. So we've always run tight margin frameworks. We've always had robust liquidation engines. There's no preferential treatment whatsoever. Everyone plays by the exact same rules. There's no special leverage, there's no deep discounts, there's no rebates. We don't say it just because you're a larger institution. We're going to, you know, like, you go, whatever we do, we do it for everyone and we make sure that it's, it's transparent and it's open, regardless of whatever the program might be. On the EO side, our approach has been actually pretty conservative, as I mentioned before, is that it has to be a last word, sorry, last resort mechanism. So our systems are designed to, and we write about this a lot too. It's like, you know, publicly available is like. And maybe we should talk more about it. But it's designed to minimize its use through proper margining, circuit breakers, insurance protection, et cetera, et cetera. So when it does trigger, it's again, rules based and it's transparent. It's not discretionary, which is what you see frankly in some of the mature markets of what you've seen in the past, which is like you favor one versus the other on insurance funds. I don't have anything in front of me, so I'm going to speak to. What I remember is that like, we generally have always maintained a dedicated insurance reserve for our derivatives markets. And so they're meant to absorb any sort of residual loss before any ADL ever, that ever might occur. And so like, that's the right way in, like how we think about it, that's the right way to protect market integrity and client confidence. That, that cannot be a. It's not an option. Right? It's a, it's a requirement around how we think. And so again, not naming any names, like, I don't know specifically what they do, what their process looks like. You know, sometimes it may or may not be opaque, but I think transparency really matters for this, which is some platforms chase volume with high leverage or opaque incentives. I don't think that's healthy for the long term. And we've always chosen durability like our current. Our clients trade in the system that prioritizes, again, fairness and longevity over any sort of short term growth, which is why we've been around for so long, barely raised any capital. And we haven't chased growth just to chase the very specific things, especially if they're not long term durable.
- [20:30]
B
Yeah, just real quick, did any clients incur ADL during this crisis?
- [20:35]
C
They did, yeah, absolutely. But I don't remember how many are what the structure or the, the number was, but it was quite low across the board.
- [20:44]
B
Okay. All right, so let's shift gears. I want to go back to Small Exchange, which is again a really funny name. It kind of reminds me of a gang where the biggest fattest guy who's like 400 pounds, his nickname is Tiny or Smalls.
- [20:56]
C
Yeah, Tiny Smalls.
- [20:57]
B
Yeah, something like that, yeah. Just, just talk about it. I mean meeting customers where, where they are. I mean this comes on the back, I think you, I forget blanking on the name, but the FCM that you acquired earlier, I think this year for 1.5 billion.
- [21:10]
C
Ninja Trader.
- [21:10]
B
That's right, yeah. Ninja Trader.
- [21:12]
C
Thank you.
- [21:12]
B
How does that fit into like the bigger plan for, for Kraken and a really consequential year for the industry?
- [21:21]
C
Well, I'm hoping that every year is a consequential year for the industry as we move forward. Look, I, I think, look, we, we don't acquire companies just to acquire. Like we, we're like, we have this approach internally that we talk about which is we want to be surgical for every, you know, time, capital and, and people that we put towards any initiative. Like it shouldn't be a waste of our time. And if we have made a mistake, we course correct as quickly as possible. So Mall Exchange actually was like something that we've been looking at for almost six months to a year. Not necessarily them themselves, but the whole industry which is like what are we going to do? And this is part of what we had done with the fcm. Ninja Trader is that Small Exchange for us today is a cornerstone move for Kraken in my opinion. Again, as I've mentioned before, it will be about meeting clients where they are. It's not about where, you know, crypto started. So it gives us that like, you know what I'd say footing and design to operate and exchange listed derivatives under CFTC oversight. And like that's very clear. Something that only a handful of firms that will think about the, the, the other aspect is again for a lot of our clients what it, what matters. Right, like so regulatory legitimacy. So now we've got the dcm, now we've Got now we have the fcm. So that means we can create and list derivative products in the United States with the same integrity as traditional futures markets. It's like again a bridge between crypto native and the regulatory world of institutional trust. That's how we think about it. In addition to that, as you mentioned with NinjaTrader, we have client access with via FCM through NinjaTrader. So it's one of the largest features brokers in the United States. That closure earlier this year gave us the ability to think about how are we going to integrate our infrastructure and their infrastructure. And it gives us a direct access to that FCM network and set of customers. It's a very, very large set of customers. Right. So it's how we now think about expanding Kraken to reach active and professional traders who already understand leverage, already understand hedging and already understand futures. And while we have a regulatory global footprint, you know, Ninja Trader was in the United States then that's you know, a part of our bigger plan. Right. So multi asset roadmap. Over time we're going to connect spot futures, tokenized markets under one roof. Same standards, different instruments and I think that's really important. Different interfaces, same infrastructure. So whether you trade BTC USD or Tesla stock, you'll do it ideally for one trusted platform or we can help support it in one compliant nature. So I do think that's really important. The other aspect is again it's consistent with our cultural continuity. What do I mean by that? What was Kraken's philosophy as we've been talking about here, is that we're building the pipes for the next generation of financial markets, regulated where they need to be and then open where they can be and then we'll continue to fight for that.
- [24:11]
B
Yeah, and just correct me if I'm wrong, but an FTM is basically a broker that can offer derivatives directly to retail clients, whereas a DCM is more of that like middle player interface between the brokerages that want to trade derivatives on an exchange like the cme. They can't directly offer it to the customers themselves. So that's how the two pieces fit in to the product stack that you're building.
- [24:37]
C
Yeah, it's a little bit more nuanced than that. I think. The way I think of it is DCM as a marketplace. So you can think of it as a DCM as a regulator. Marketplace is where the products live and so small exchange gives like crack in the capability and oversight. So meaning we can design and operate and exchange listed derivatives very directly. FCM you can think of as like the on ramp. Right. If, I'm sorry, I'm trying to dumb it down.
- [25:00]
B
I'm pretty dumb.
- [25:01]
C
No, no, not at all, not at all. I mean, when, whenever I got into capital markets I was like, I don't.
- [25:06]
B
Understand how anybody, my wife calls me the smartest dumb guy she knows or the dumbest smart guy she knows so.
- [25:12]
C
Well, I think that's a compliment. So, so, so the FCN is I think of as like your gateway. And so it's how traders access the exchange and the deposit collateral and execute orders. And so NinjaTrader historically has played in that space, which is there, the fcm. Now we have a DCM as well.
- [25:28]
B
Right.
- [25:28]
C
So we've got the marketplace and the on ramp. And so then why that matters is that now you're able to control the product layer, the collateral layer, and so you're able to partner and integrate other FCMs if they want, if you want to. As a means we can distribute our products to a wider base of traders as well. So it's end to end vertical infrastructure for us as well as other partners, given that we are an exchange infrastructure at the same time. So I think of it as product creation all the way to execution.
- [25:51]
B
Gotcha. So, so theoretically this puts you in competition then with like the CFTC and Civo and perhaps even like merging players like Polymarka and Kalshi and those type that are kind of getting involved in derivatives as well, where you can design.
- [26:07]
C
In theory, obviously these give you the ability to compete with anybody. But that's not the point. It's more about, okay, where do we think about ourselves as a marketplace and then where do we think about ourselves on the onramp? Clearly today we're very much of an on ramp towards crypto trading assets, et cetera. But obviously the, you know, the world is very large and so we can think about partnering rather than having to compete, you know, vertically integrate in some areas.
- [26:29]
B
Yeah, that is interesting. I'd like to just explore a little more, like how you think you might be able to craft some unique products like with the dcm. And I know you just acquired them this week, so it still might be a little early. But different ways of accepting collateral, as you mentioned, or moving further down the line, we're offering products on, on longer tail assets. Prediction Markets is a big one. Like, do you have any interesting ideas on how you're going to use that? As far as I can tell, I don't think Kraken's done very much in prediction markets so far at least they haven't publicly announced anything.
- [27:04]
C
Yeah, so I'm, I think so. One of the things that we were doing our kraken since we started is how do we continue to improve the experiences that we actually have? How do we just make it much better for our customers instead of just running to the next FOMO category. And it's not to say that any of these categories are fomo because I actually think there's a lot of changes that are happening. Right. Some people call it the financialization of information and knowledge and some people call it the Internet capital markets. And a lot of these things are converging. I think that's all true. It's more about a, you know, I mentioned of time. And so when I say when we build products or we craft products, I really mean markets and instruments that are intentionally designed, not copy pasted. And so you have a, you've got this nature or this memetic nature in the industry where people think about copy pasting and it should work. And so we're not going to build something that is a copy paste. We need like what we've done since day one has been very nuanced around. Like what are we building for our customers? Sometimes you lose your way, right? Like you make some mistakes along, along the way. But it's about building products that solve all of our real participant needs and what our customers want and what they can evolve into. So I do think about new forms of collateral, bespoke exposure, programmable outcomes as we think about actual what crypto is meant to be from the bitcoin paper and beyond. So we're not just listing trades, right? We're like our goal here is to continue to design markets. And how to think about that is think of a futures market like a blank canvas. So just bear with me for a second. I know that sound a little insane. And so on that canvas you can layer new primitives, right? So what does collateral flexibility mean? It's like imagine being able to post ETH tokenized T bills, even stablecoins as margin, each with different risk weights. Okay, that's one layer programmable settlement, smart contract base settlement that clears in seconds, not days, right? And then you got composable exposure. Traders can build synthetic exposures. So say think of like a BTC volatility against like ETH yield. But I'm just making this up. This might actually not be a great idea. So don't do it. It's not investment advice, but on chain and transparent, right? And so it's about creating risk for. It's not about creating risk for its own sake, it's about creating precision. And so that's what it could look like. Right. And so I'm just giving you one example of.
- [29:29]
B
Yeah, the cross marketing. Yeah, it means a big thing. I mean I know some of the Wall street banks are doing it too. I mean Goldman, I think JPM are letting people now pledge like I bet shares and stuff as, as collateral.
- [29:41]
C
But it's slow. It's slow and it's not transparent. I think that's what I mean by like when you think about prediction markets, I actually think it's part of the same broader arc which is price is a reflection of collective intelligence if you, if you think of it that way. So whether it's the price of oil, the odds of a rate cut or the outcome of an event, markets are information engines. So over time we'll see more and more of these move to on chain too. So again, transparent, permissionless, but grounded in regulated frameworks. And I think you've seen a lot of that from polymark and Kalshi anyways is that, that they're also moving in that same direction.
- [30:17]
B
I got to say that one of my biggest fears is that dads start pledging their shares as collateral given sometimes the way the M navs are going down. I wrote a story a few months ago on how all this could potentially come crashing and that could be one way, not the only way, but one way. So there's always that give and take. You want people to be as flexible as possible with collateral while making sure those different risk segments that you mentioned are appropriately cataloged and well the, the.
- [30:45]
C
The real killer for any of these, which is why people talk about like systemic risk or risk in the system is A they're fragmented, B they're not transparent. And I think that's the key to why we get so excited about how this infrastructure gives you a technical foundation to this actually very responsibly. So not just us, but like anyone could basically use you know, DCM and a custody framework to experiment safely within the rules rather than, you know, crack craft something that is, you know, non transparent by nature, which is what we've seen in the past every single time there's a glitch in the matrix.
- [31:17]
A
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- [32:03]
B
All right, so let's talk about tokenization. I know you guys have the partnership with X stocks and have started moving into that space. I've been in crypto I think since 2012, 2013 and I've seen many cycles of tokenization hype and they've filtered out this time. It certainly does seem to be different though. There seems to be new, broader, sustained momentum behind it. Talk to me about your strategy when it comes to tokenization and I know that some of these initiatives have just gotten off the ground. But. But what are some of the takeaways so far and how do you expect it to grow moving forward?
- [32:42]
C
So I think again going back to the core message, we've seen this hype before. I've seen that actually since day one, since you know, the beginning of, you know, the beginning of like the crypto movement or the OG movement. I think the difference of what you're seeing now is culturally there's buy in, regulatory, there's buy in and technologically you're seeing infrastructure that is finally caught up with this vision. So real assets, real compliance, real liquidity, which I think is the key. And so I think you're going to always see this like up and down of headlines where you had the headlines before but nothing was there. You have the headlines now, but it's just starting and some people kind of forget about it. So I think the way we think about it is it's plumbing and we need to continue to build out that plumbing. And it takes time, it's not going to happen immediately. So in 2017 it was conceptual. I don't know if you remember that. A lot of people had talked about that, which is that it's let's put real world, you know, assets on chain there. But the rails weren't ready. There's no custody standards, no compliant venues, no demand for regulated players. That has changed very quickly. Today you have all three in place. You've got regulated custody, you've got programmable assets, you've got institutions that want to trade 24, 7. That is a number one ask from all of our customers, which we want to do that. And now, you know, and obviously you've got the stablecoin market, you've got stablecoin bill. And so, you know, now people are thinking about, okay, great, we can actually tokenize an equity, a bond, a fund share and actually settle it on chain. It's possible, it's instant, it's transparent and it's across jurisdictions. It can be permissionless for the first time. It doesn't have to be as a part of a walled garden. So that, that's a, that's a leap in market design which I think we haven't really seen before, not just that new wrapper. And so our, our strategy has been, you know, XDOX initiative where it's not again, walled garden. It's not part of just Kraken. You only get it available on Kraken. It's available to anyone who wants to participate and we want to be able to help promote that, which is how do we bring more and more markets on chain? We obviously have an engine. We've got liquidity, we've got institutional investors, we've got custody, we have you, we have the ability to move this forward. And so when we talk to our customers and clients and now new investors, it gives investors access to the public company shares. I can trade now, permission, again, permissionlessly being the key. And it's theirs across the ecosystems. It's not just us, right? Because if they want to do their own, you know, risk based, you know, solution or trade or access to something, we should be able to allow them to do that. Especially if we don't, we don't, you know, allow for it or we don't have the ability to provide for that today or, or moving forward. So, you know, building it into the blockchain neutral and platform agnostic so that liquidity isn't trapped in silos and is, I think how we thought about it from day one. And other people have taken another approach, which is it's got to be permission. We have these issues. Why perpetuate and replicate the problems within traditional markets when you don't need to? So you want to be able to move between Solana or Ethereum or BNB or Tron or others. That's how tokenization scales in our opinion. And so we've anchored it around our regulated infrastructure, our KYC and compliance and code custody so that it's institutional ready from day one. And we're already seeing a lot of interest. So, you know, you've seen just a slew of announcements and partnerships that we've done obviously with, you know, telegram, messenger, ton wallet, etc. I think you're going to see us continue to do that. So we're not, we're not chasing it for novelty. We're, we're. Our goal is like, okay, how do you collapse those barriers around how people traditionally thought about defi and tradfi on separate. But you give the. You get the same trust and security that Kraken is known for and what tradfi is known for as well.
- [36:34]
B
Yeah, it's funny, I, I remember sitting in a bar in New York. It must have been like 20, 15, 20 or 16. The day before R3 was announced, was. Was unveiled to the world and they were going to compete with. I always, I always say hyper liquid when I mean hyperledger, and hyperledger when I mean hyper liquid, but it was hyperledger. And it's funny, there were so many different instances of this. Like, I actually wrote a story a couple years ago about how I think I saw the same McKinsey presentation about tokenization six years apart. But there does seem to be some new momentum there. I want to just relate to this.
- [37:08]
C
Well on that front. If you go back in time, in history, depending on how far you want to go, I think I always kind of tell this to a lot of people because I just think it's funny if you go back in time, you look at anyone who's written about this, consultants, newspapers, etc. They talk about how the printing press, like I go back in time in history, all the time, printing press, bad for the world. Industrial revolution, bad for the world. Electricity, bad for the world. Internet, bad for the world. Mobile revolution, bad for the world. Bitcoin, bad for the world. That's one side. The other side is all of the business people are consultants, depending on when they really started. So you can think of it as like, you know, electricity and beyond. Computer and beyond. Internet and beyond. They just talked about how the whole world was going to change immediately, and it didn't. It just. It takes time for these things to ramp up. But what's kind of interesting is that every time we've gotten a great technology that gives us more power and freedom, in my opinion, or sovereignty in some cases, which is a lot of what we see with now financial freedom, which is what we're all trying to build for. It's. It's met with, hey, this is going to happen tomorrow. And like, we're gonna, we're gonna lose market structure, we're gonna lose in the volatile risk, we're going to lose all these things. But at the Same time it's going to disrupt the world, it's going to be great. And they're usually wrong about the timing, but they're right around like the things that will happen. But usually all the good things happen first and then no bad things really happen. Over time you just kind of see like everyone kind of adapts and it becomes better across the board for all market participants.
- [38:39]
B
Yeah. How do you, how do you like the permissionless? I understand the allure of that, but when it comes to things like, like stocks or like if you're like Apollo's tokenizing a private credit fund or like something from KKR where there needs to be white labeled addresses that needs to be kyc, I understand the underlying blockchain could be permissionless, but these assets are still permissioned. How do you sort of bridge those two, those two elements?
- [39:09]
C
Look, a lot of these products are for like a different constituent of people. So maybe look, the bridge between permissionless and institutional tokenization is really just identity aware infrastructure. That's how I kind of think through it. Programmable compliance, not gated access. The goal isn't to like wall off institutions from DeFi or vice versa is to make like permissionless systems smart enough to be able to understand who's participating. Now everything that I just said there is hard. It's not easy. So take your example which you gave, which is tokenized Apollo credit fund or you know, or even our tokenized equities through X stocks. The challenge isn't the token, it's the context of who owns it under what rules and in which jurisdictions. So instead of hard permission permissioning, you, we, you know, you, you think about like ideally you can think about like a testable identities, wallets that carry verifiable credentials. Like these are things that you can build but still interact natively on chain. Right. And each jurisdiction can be different. I'm not advocating for anything, I'm just saying like this is something that you can do. And so that actually also means that Apollo can have a token that can circulate in the open economy. But only wallets with the right credentials can say like I'm an accredited investor or specific KYC levels, whatever, you know, et cetera, et cetera, can hold or trade it, but it just means that you have more participants to be able to be a part of it, which is you can then think about programmable compliance. You don't have to say everything is a free for all. It I think it preserves openness while satisfying different types of regulation. As you'd mentioned before because you know, the world and its jurisdictions are fragmented in some cases but a lot of the world isn't for like the most basic things. And I think actually the more you think about how to build this know from the bottom up permissionless, the more you're able to say okay great, well here's what I can build in order to support that rather than just say I don't want that in the first place. Which is I think, you know, people are starting to come around to as we talk about what's happening worldwide in DC or in Europe etc.
- [41:07]
B
Okay, just I think maybe one more on tokenization and then in the last 15 minutes or so we have a few more topics to get to. But I am curious. The last I think wave of tokenization that we saw was really around like integrating central banks. A lot of these like, like, like be big like gibs and, and huge like 9, 10 figure like credit issuances et cetera with integrations with wholesale CBDC pilots. Yeah, it's a different world now. Like we're post genius act stablecoins appear to privately issued stablecoins are clearly ascendants or treasury secretaries expecting treasury trillions of stablecoins moving forward. How does that intersect with this tokenization trend and is that the launch pad that it really needs to kind of reach the critical mass.
- [41:58]
C
A lot to unpack there.
- [41:59]
B
So.
- [42:02]
C
Yeah, you're right. So the first wave was about proving that it could be done and I think people kind of moved away from what it means to have permissionless systems. I. I think look, the key, the, the key thing that I think is really important that everyone kind of forgets about is distribution. It's just what is that wave and how do you actually make that happen? One of the folks that you know, sorry, the set of folks that paved that way in the past or even even now has been stable coins. Right. In terms of like what does it mean to be able to do distribute across the board. So I think for a lot of these assets that we're talking about, which is how do you move from pilot to product? A lot of, of what you had mentioned before, you know, central banks, G S credit, you know, credit testing, settlement, you know, onchain, etc. Etc. Is they have this worldview that they need to figure out how to work within the con confines or construct of how they've been built themselves in the past. Rather than first principles, do you think about distribution? And I think that's where people make a lot of mistakes which is what is the what is the onchain settlement frameworks give us the legal foundation to be able to actually build markets, right? So who sits where? And the way which we've been approaching it is okay, great, we're crypto first and crypto. And so Kraken has actually been sitting at that intersection, the place where infrastructure can become commerce. That's how I sort of think through those, those lines and pieces since we've spent so much time building out a global footprint to do that in the first place. And so I, I think of it as like three phases for any of these, which is phase one, institutional proof. The early tokenization wave has been led by the G sibs or sorry, has been led by this is what we want to do. Or even, you know, you can think about like cities, regulated liability network, I don't know what that means. Or JPMs like Onyx, BIS projects, et cetera. Those are all controlled environments. They're proving a concept they have not been able to prove distribution or access or that it is helpful as a, as a yield product to a customer. And so the questions they keep asking is can they do credit, can they do fx, can they do repo, you know, live on chain, et cetera. Second phase, as you know, the world has evolved is where we're getting to regulatory clarity. Obviously genius act, as you mentioned, is like it gives the same institutions now, hopefully not just us, but you know, other folks to work with us, to operate, not just experiment. Before they were experimenting in closed environments. Now they have a framework which I think is really important. And my hope is that more and more participants come in, is that now they have a framework around issuance, around disclosure and stable settlement units. And this is already paving the way for what it will look like for the next evolution of tokenization. And so I think it really comes down to phase three, which is what we're all talking about now, which is why we talked about tokenized stocks is commercialization. Right? That's where we are now, which is like who's going to build layers where tokenized instruments can actually trade, settle, circulate, distribute, where is liquidity? How do you think about price discovery? And where can user access actually happen across the board? And so, you know, we, we've been really, really passionate that we don't want to be a central bank. You know, we don't want to be like where I think JPM is a central bank to a certain extent. We want to be a distribution layer for anyone to be able to get their products access to the customers Right. So tokenized Treasuries, credit funds, equities, they need regulated venues, they need custody, they need interoperable markets. And I think that's where Kraken continues, can continue to serve, which is what we've already started with. I think it's really cool in that stable coins and tokenized credit already has paved the way for programmable settlement. So you can actually now think about like delivery versus payment on chain instantaneously. Right. Like, I think of it at that layer. That's what makes tokenized assets, in my opinion, much more commercially viable, not just the like conceptually elegant. So that's, that's what I think about how we push for, push for. And so the, you know, the first decade is tokenization. Now it's like, okay, we've proved that it works concept. Now it's like the next decade is going to be how do we prove it at scale? We integrate, how do we move all these assets, how do we distribute it and get engagement across the board? And so my, my passion here is that our goal is to make those institutional innovations that we've talked about actually more and more accessible to a larger audience of people. So there's not like a consortium wall, but it can be built through an open infrastructure that anyone can build, can, can be sorry, that anyone can build upon.
- [46:46]
B
And I think the real key there, I remember like all Those pilots and VOCs, it's the secondary market trading that's the real key. Achieving enough distribution that there's liquid secondary markets for all these funds so that people, when someone acquires them, they know that they can use them and offload them and bring them back, et cetera. That seemed to be the hiccup. It wasn't a technology problem or even a business problem. It was more like a coordination problem to try to, to try to achieve that critical mass. And maybe stablecoins is the key to that by putting all of this stuff on these permissionless rails as opposed to permissioned blockchains. One more product question and then I want to get to what's happening in D.C. and just a couple of things to wrap up the Inc. Blockchain. I always found it pretty fascinating. I mean, there's lots of different robinhood, coinbase, crypto.com, i'm sure I'm forgetting some that have launched various, like L2s and blockchains. You guys are a little different than Coinbase and BAS in the sense that you have a separate foundation and there's ostensibly a gap between the two as opposed to Coinbase that directly runs bas. But how does that fit into your bigger plan? And how does the ink token, how is that going to be incorporated in your product offerings?
- [47:59]
C
So I think about everything we just said, right, which is how you think about regulated venues, how do you think about what's open?
- [48:08]
B
The.
- [48:10]
C
The analogy I like to use a lot is you've got, you know, Android or iOS, right. And so what made Apple products really beautiful in some cases or great and elegant was that some very specific products were vertically integrated. Some products were open in terms of you had other people that could build upon the operating system. And so I kind of think about all of these the same way, which is like, okay, great, what do we do as an exchange? What do we do in terms of infrastructure? And so we've continued to look at where markets are going. So to your question, like why does INC even exist? Why do we need another blockchain? Why do we need another layer to it? And so we think of it as how do we give our clients secure scalable foundations for the next phase of what now chain markets are going to look, look like while also understanding how the market is continuing to evolve, especially in the DEFI ecosystem. Right. So it's a, I think of it as a overall over time, as we work with the foundation, other, you know, projects that are being built is how do you think about the tissue between Kraken's regulated world and the open DEFI ecosystem. Right. Because you do want innovation to happen as fast as possible. You want to be able to support that. So when I look at where the markets are going on chain settlement, composable liquidity, programmable collateral and we, I think we've realized more and more that we needed a chain that's purpose built for those types of financial primitives, not just for something that just completely open and it can be anything for anyone. So do you know, does that mean you want speculation? Sure, people can do that. If you want to build memes, sure, you can do that as well. But I think it's more about how do you think about performance, transparency, composability, where more and more institutional grade infrastructure can be built. Right. And so we've started launching that. We had TID that just launched last week. We've got another set of products that are launching over the next 30, 69 days that are, you know, that are vertically integrated in a way that's like great for the chain plus the application. We're helping to collaborate, we're helping to build, we're starting to give out Support for that. The foundation is becoming more and more focused on what do these DEFI native systems need safely right off the bat. And so how it fits into Kraken's plan outside of the Inc Plan is how do you think about on chain execution layer for again multiple assets and how do we make sure that we can give access to our customers around traditional spot, traditional futures custody products that live within again I think a regulated perimeter in some cases as we've been talking about. So I think what we want to be able to do is leverage Inc. And build upon that so that we have more and more products that we can build into the perimeter of Defi that people want to have access to so that you do the basics. And I know it sounds, you know, corny in some cases, but how can users lend, how do they borrow? How do you think about, you know, trading on chain? It's we've already done this directly from our experience with building out an exchange in the central order book and providing liquidity in a safe and secure way. Now how do we do that more and more and extending into defi and I think importantly is again it's not a walled garden for us. It's a bridge to be able to participate. Anyone else can participate too, but they can see examples of what they can do and how they can participate in it. So then again, assets now can now move between Kraken and other Inc Products that are being built with more transparency, clear compliance rails in some cases and developers can build upon it without having to ask us for permission to they can get access to our customers. And I think that's more and more important rather than us having to control a walled garden or that's how people sort of think about it. And you've seen everyone rush to this which is we got to do it too because we got to own it. And I think our goal is going to always be, you know, what's the definition of open versus closed. Inc is open by design. Anyone can build on it, connect to it. We're going to support that. The difference is that we're going to what we do there is we're going to treat it as compliance and reliability as first class citizens. So instead of in like an open network that ignores, you know, jurisdictions, regulations for what we do, it's going to be one that no, it's open but we're like responsible in terms of like the products that we build on behalf of our customers. So I think of it as a again, open infrastructure with trusted gateways. These words that I'm using though can be very, very nuanced because you know, trusted gateways can also mean closed walls. And we're very, very focused on making sure this is open. We want to be able to make sure that Ink can be for our customers and our institutions and the trust that they have is like where institutions can meet that composability in the first place. To the Ink token. You know, this is something that the foundation is actually quite focused on, like we're helping to provide guidance there. But I think the way to sort of think about it is you can't create a token that's a gimmick, which is what you see a lot of the time in the ecosystem and what you've seen with past actors. It has to be a coordination layer where we're all participating in order to make it successful. And so you have to think about network security, governance, incentivizing liquidity through protocols like we have with tidro. First of many to come, which again Tyro is like our native lending protocol built on aave. And so early users can then earn points, they can participate in the ecosystem, they can actually be a part of the community that is participating in the future of what the bigger story of Inc is going to be in terms of aligning users, developers. And I think you have to do that. Right? And there's plenty of examples in the past of what you've seen where you need to make sure that this is a community first shared on chain economy, not you know, a top down corporation coming in saying like we're going to own more and more of this, et cetera, which is what you see with a lot of the other folks. Gotcha.
- [53:50]
B
Okay, I know we just have about five minutes left so I want to wrap up with a fun conversation. Regulation, there's a, there's a big meeting happening in D.C. tomorrow between Senate, Dems and the industry. I know your co CEO Dave is going to be there. Do you have any expectations? Like what are you hoping to get out of it? I know that I just did an interview before we joined with our regulatory writer and it doesn't seem like clarity or market structure has a real chance of finishing, of being signed this year. What are your hopes?
- [54:24]
C
Well, what a doomsayer. Look, we, we've, I mean we've been doing this for a long time, right? And, and I think you know, the genius act was like the first push for us to be able to get to an understanding between market regulators, market participants, market clarity that like we're here to Stay. And we want to make sure that we are within a regulated environment with like, this is the first time in history you've seen, you know, companies that are building technology and liquidity systems say like, we need clarity. Right. And we've seen that. Right. And so not, not a pun on the Clarity Act. We'll get there in a second. I, I think we've been spending a lot of time. I, I don't think there is a week where myself or Dave or any of our senior leaders are not in D.C. of course we have our, our team that's on the ground, they're educating at the end of the day, which is what's our, what's our real message to policymakers is that the US can finally move from uncertainty to clarity, which is what, again, no pun in the Clarity Act. And the broader genius framework is historic. And it's not just because they regulate crypto, it's that they're recognizing that as a true part of the financial system. So look, I'm pretty optimistic that we are going to continue to move around that path. We're also last in the ecosystem, if you take a look at Europe is ahead of us the first time regulation gives clarity to those institutions and folks, and they're an implementation mode, not, not sort of debate mode. And so the meeting with Senate Democrats or Republicans in the past is always about engaging in good faith. It's not a partisan thing. Right. We're not asking for special treatment. No one around the, no one around the table is saying like we're better than anyone else. It's just like, hey, as long as there's clear, consistent rules of the road for American innovators and American companies like us, where we don't have to build offshore, we're not forced to build offshore, customers are not forced to build offshore. We, we can get to a place where we can upstate expand with substance in the ecosystem. So look, the, the US has built and has built like one of the greatest global financial systems in the world. We can continue to do it, we can augment it and we can do it for this digital era. And so that's the conversation that we're trying to have that we're trying to continue to move into versus sort of the ticky tax and the doomsayers that are out there. And I think they're there to protect the banks, protect monopolies and protect the things that are bad for US consumers in our opinion. And so we want to make this bottoms up, customer led, protocol led, innovation led, where the US can lead. And, and I think that's a responsible innovation story versus we know, sort of the back and forth and so cracking the stance, like, where are we? We played. We've always continued to play the long game. We're registered, we're licensed, we're compliant in every jurisdiction we operate. And we want to make sure that we can continue to align, not just us, but the rest of the participants that are there, including the defi protocols that haven't got as much of a voice that they need is that if we have a unified framework that lets firms compete and innovate without ambiguity, that's great. And that's where, you know, Dave is going to be there next week. I was there in the prior ones. We go back and forth, depending on, you know, the House, the Senate, the sec, the cftc, the White House. We're going to want to continue to contribute constructively to help bridge what I would consider technical reality with policy goals. And we want to help lawmakers design rules that protect consumers, but preserve as much innovation here in the United States versus moving everything offshore. Gotcha.
- [58:06]
B
And just, just to wrap up, I mean, I'd like to just kind of look ahead. I mean, what's next for Kraken? The rest of the year? 2026. I know it was reported, I believe in Fortune, you guys raised 500 million at a, at a 15 billion valuation. Kicking tires on, on an IPO. Don't know how much you can comment on that, but I'd love whatever thoughts you can share. But, but just in general beyond that, I mean, are there more acquisitions along the way? Like, what are your, like, two or three top goals that people should look out for?
- [58:35]
C
Look, one of the greatest things that I think we do at Kraken, which is what got me so excited, is that, like, we want to imbue the cultural values that Jesse had said, which is privacy. It's, you know, your assets are your own. And so, you know, we've always done this. Like, we barely raised any capital in the past. I'm forgetting the exact number. I think it was less than 25 million.
- [59:00]
B
Yeah, it's. That's always kind of astounding to me. I, I think even when I first joined there, I realized that you raised such little money. I almost wondered, like, how it gives you the Runway to. Or the, the balance sheet to make some of these big acquisitions. I mean, I guess operating profitably, but.
- [59:15]
C
Yeah. And so part of, part of what we wanted to do, though, was also, hey, like, we are, we are in charge of Our own destiny. But we do it in a durable path. Right. And so it's why we don't comment on anything fundraising, debt, even on policy. We don't comment on any of the rumors. We're, we are, we say things when we're in the room and then we disclose and we think it's important. But then we're transparent with our customers too, which is like, here's our financials, here's how we operate, here's our proof of reserves, here's why you can trust us, here's how we're regulated, here's our licenses, et ceter, et. And so I can say, what I can say about Kraken, which is really important, is that like, yes, we're in a strong position, we're profitable, we have them for a very long time, we grow in a disciplined way. We're going to continue to grow and we've been very well capitalized for a very long time to execute on our long term roadmap. You asked me earlier, how do you think about adl? It's like we have risk frameworks, but we also have disciplined frameworks around how we think about growth. We're not trying to chase something. We want to be able to make sure that when we create a product, it is a great product. We craft a product and we make it better and better over time. And so I, I think we're actually frankly fortunate enough to be one of the few platforms in the industry that has been consistent about that through every market cycle. Which is like we're living proof that we don't need to be subsidized or raise billions of dollars in order to do X, Y and Z. We can do it when we need to for things that are much more surgical around how we think about flexibility of growth, flexibility of building, not financing. So a lot of the stuff, you know, again, as we've gotten larger and larger and we've shared more of our information, that's when the rumors start. And I think what we do is we just clarify and say, here's what we've done, here's how we've substantiated, here's the metrics that support it, and here's how we're trying to build our company for the long haul. That's durable. It's not something that necessarily will do in six months to a year. But where are we three years out, five years out, ten years out. Gotcha.
- [61:07]
B
Anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up?
- [61:11]
C
No, I mean, I think it's great that you guys are asking these questions. I've been watching for a long time, so it's an honor being here. And so I appreciate you taking the time to ask these questions about myself and Kraken. Great. All right.
- [61:24]
B
Well, yeah, thanks so much. Thanks for joining. I'll be back as well with more interviews with key newsmakers like Arjun. Arjun, thanks so much for time. Really appreciate it.
- [61:32]
C
Thanks, Stephen. Appreciate it.