Venues / Kraken

Is Kraken legit and safe?

The checklist

Custody: who holds your money

Exchange balances are held by Kraken. Its Wyoming-chartered subsidiary Kraken Financial (a Special Purpose Depository Institution) offers custody to eligible clients in certain states. Kraken Wallet is a separate self-custody app.

Who backs Kraken

• Hummingbird Ventures and Bitcoin Opportunity Fund (Series A) — $5,000,000 (2014-03) source
• SBI Group (lead, Series B) (2016-02) source
• 2,263 individual investors via a special-purpose vehicle — $13,500,000 (2019-06) source

Incidents

• 2021-09: CFTC settlement over margin trading ($1.25M). Kraken agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle CFTC claims that it had offered unregistered margin trading. source
• 2022-11: OFAC sanctions settlement ($362K). After self-reporting possible trades with customers in Iran, Kraken settled with the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, paying $362,000 and agreeing to invest a further $100,000 in sanctions compliance controls. source
• 2023-02-09: SEC staking-as-a-service settlement ($30M). The SEC charged Payward Ventures and Payward Trading (Kraken) with failing to register their staking-as-a-service program, which advertised returns of up to 21%. Without admitting or denying the allegations, Kraken agreed to stop offering the program to US clients and pay $30 million. Kraken later restarted a US staking program. source
• 2023-11: SEC lawsuit (dropped March 2025). The SEC sued Kraken, alleging it operated as an unregistered securities exchange and mixed customer assets with its own funds, which Kraken denied. The SEC agreed to drop the case in March 2025. source
• 2024-06-01: Service halted for Maine residents. Kraken halted services to Maine residents from June 1, 2024, and asked them to withdraw by April 12, 2025. Assets left after that date were treated as abandoned and escheated to the state of Maine. source
• 2024-08: Australian court fine over margin product (A$8M). After ASIC proceedings, Australia's Federal Court ordered Bit Trade, Kraken's Australian operator, to pay an A$8 million fine for issuing a credit facility to about 1,100 customers without meeting product rules. source

Real downsides

• Not available to residents of New York or Maine.
• Instant buys cost 1% (1.5% custom orders) plus a spread that Kraken does not publish as a fixed rate.
• ACH Plaid purchases are held for seven days, and card or wallet purchases can be held for 72 hours, before withdrawal.
• Settled with the SEC for $30 million over its US staking program in 2023, and with OFAC and the CFTC earlier.

Can you use it where you live?

Kraken does not serve residents of New York or Maine. In other US states, Krak fiat transfers are unavailable in Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Utah, xStocks are not offered, and some rewards products are limited to select states. Older reviews also list Washington as excluded, but Kraken's current licensing page names only Maine and New York. In the UK, new retail accounts face a 24-hour cooling-off period before trading and retail clients cannot trade derivatives. EEA clients are served through MiCA-licensed Irish entities, with some assets (including USDT) restricted. Kraken does not serve Japan, Russia, Iran, North Korea and several other regions. (source)

We report what the venue's own terms say. Don't use a VPN to get around restrictions; venues can freeze accounts that do.

How to use Kraken without getting scammed

• Only open www.kraken.com — fake lookalike sites and "support" DMs are the most common way people lose funds on any trading venue.
• Never share a seed phrase or private key. No real support agent will ask for one.
• A referral code only changes your fee and who gets a share of it. It never needs your keys.
• Treat every new memecoin as able to go to zero. A legit venue does not make the coins on it safe.

Comparing options? See the full Kraken sheet or Binance, Bybit, OKX.