Kraken to launch stock trading services for U.S. and U.K. markets: Report

U.S.-based cryp­to exchange Krak­en plans to offer trad­ing in US-list­ed stocks and exchange-trad­ed funds, accord­ing to a source famil­iar with the mat­ter as cit­ed by Bloomberg. The ini­tia­tive will be spear­head­ed by a new­ly estab­lished divi­sion, Krak­en Securities.

Accord­ing to the report­ing, Krak­en has already obtained nec­es­sary reg­u­la­to­ry per­mits in the U.K., and is in the process of obtain­ing a bro­ker-deal­er license from the US Finan­cial Indus­try Reg­u­la­to­ry Authority.

When reached for com­ment, a Krak­en spokesper­son told Cryp­toSlate: 

“Krak­en is always explor­ing how it can pow­er the glob­al adop­tion of cryp­tocur­ren­cies. While we can’t com­ment on rumors or spec­u­la­tion, we’re look­ing to broad­en and enhance our offer­ing so clients con­tin­ue to have secure and seam­less access to Kraken’s full prod­uct suite.”

This report comes on the heels of Kraken’s recent suc­cess­ful expan­sion in Europe, which has seen the firm obtain­ing a Euro­pean Union E‑Money Insti­tu­tion (EMI) license from the Cen­tral Bank of Ire­land, broad­en­ing its EUR fiat ser­vices across all 27 Euro­pean Union mem­ber states and the Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Area. Addi­tion­al­ly, the com­pa­ny reg­is­tered as a Vir­tu­al Asset Ser­vice Provider (VASP) with the Bank of Spain, fur­ther solid­i­fy­ing its pres­ence in the Euro­pean market.

How­ev­er, this for­ay into US-list­ed stocks and ETFs unfolds against a back­drop of reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges at home. Ear­li­er this year, the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion (SEC) charged Krak­en for fail­ing to reg­is­ter its cryp­tocur­ren­cy stak­ing ser­vice as a secu­ri­ty offer­ing, result­ing in a $30 mil­lion set­tle­ment and the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the stak­ing ser­vice for U.S. residents.

Fur­ther­more, an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS) required Krak­en to sur­ren­der cer­tain user infor­ma­tion, empha­siz­ing the firm’s com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing its clients from poten­tial harms such as iden­ti­ty theft.