Kraken has been around long enough to see nearly every version of the crypto market up close.
Founded in 2011, it lived through Bitcoin’s early volatility, the first big exchange era, the ICO boom, the long bear markets, the rise of institutional crypto, and the latest push into tokenized and multi-asset trading.
Across those cycles, Kraken kept adding products, expanding its reach, and finding new ways to stay relevant as the industry changed around it.
In March 2025, Kraken agreed to buy NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion. In April 2025, it launched trading in more than 11,000 U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs for select U.S. clients. In June 2025, it rolled out xStocks for eligible non-U.S. clients, starting with 60 tokenized U.S. equities, and launched Krak, a payments app supporting transfers across more than 160 countries and 300-plus assets.
The company kept building through the second half of 2025 with deals for Capitalise.ai, Breakout, Small Exchange, and Backed, then added Magna in February 2026 and Bitnomial soon after. By early 2026, Kraken was pushing further into tokenized equities as xStocks expanded from 60 at launch to 100 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs.
Let’s take a closer look at how Kraken has been building through this latest phase of the market.
The NinjaTrader deal in March 2025 gave Kraken a serious foothold in U.S. regulated futures.
Kraken valued the transaction at $1.5 billion and described NinjaTrader as the leading U.S. retail futures platform.
A few months later, Kraken used that foothold to launch U.S. regulated crypto futures and said it planned to add commodity, fixed income, FX, and equity futures later in 2025.
This gave Kraken a direct route into one of the main markets active traders use for hedging and directional bets.
Kraken pushed further in October 2025 when it bought Small Exchange from IG Group for $100 million. Importantly, Small Exchange came with a CFTC-regulated Designated Contract Market license.
Kraken said the purchase would help it launch a fully U.S.-native derivatives suite. Reuters reported the same deal as a move to strengthen Kraken’s American derivatives business for retail and institutional clients.
This put Kraken closer to the center of the U.S. futures market.
Kraken’s tokenized equity push became far more serious in 2025.
Reuters reported on May 22, 2025, that Kraken planned to offer tokenized versions of more than 50 U.S. stocks and ETFs, including Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia, to non-U.S. clients.