Kraken expands toward unified banking, brokerage and crypto platform

Kraken plans to combine exchange, brokerage and banking functions on a single ledger, allowing customers to use assets as collateral without selling them.

In an Oct. 18 interview with The Wolf of All Streets, Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the company aims to build trading, banking and asset management services on its existing infrastructure so customers can hold, grow and move money.

Sethi said Kraken has spent 15 years building custody, cryptographic key management, signing policies, cold storage, liquidation systems, fiat payment rails, customer onboarding and licensing infrastructure. A ledger that never loses a satoshi provides the foundation for expanding into other financial products, he said.

The platform is designed to manage cash, crypto assets, tokenized stocks and futures margin as a single balance. Sethi described Kraken’s model as combining the roles of a market, global broker and bank within one system.

Unlike traditional financial institutions, the platform would operate without borders or fixed business hours. Kraken’s roadmap includes using tokenized stocks as collateral on Sundays, making payments against stablecoins at any time and deploying AI agents to move money or access liquidity while customers sleep.

Kraken has agreed to acquire Saldo, a bank in Lithuania, and expects the transaction to close in 2027 after working through the regulatory process. Sethi said payment firms can safeguard customer funds one-to-one but generally cannot pay interest on them or lend against them, while banks can provide both functions.

The company initially plans to offer interest on customer balances and lending backed by customers’ holdings in Europe. Sethi said creating a 24/7 system that can move and deploy collateral regardless of its form has been the leading request from customers.

Sethi also attributed Kraken’s faster product launches to its internally built infrastructure. He said speed follows when infrastructure is treated as a product rather than a cost center, adding that the company has entered a second phase focused on extending and refining its existing technology.