What Drove Kraken’s Revenue Growth in 2025?
Kraken parent company Payward reported $2.2 billion in adjusted revenue for 2025, up 33% from the prior year, according to a blog post published Tuesday by Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi. The figures point to a business that is no longer dominated by spot trading alone, as non-trading services now account for a larger share of revenue.
According to the disclosure, roughly 47% of Payward’s revenue came from trading activity, while 53% was generated by other services, including custody, payments, yield products, and financing. Total platform transaction volume reached $2 trillion during the year, a 34% increase year over year.
“Trading revenue was supported by deep liquidity and sustained engagement, while asset-based revenue scaled with assets on platform through custody, yield, payments, and financing,” Sethi wrote in the post.
Investor Takeaway
How Acquisitions Reshaped Kraken’s Business
Payward’s growth in 2025 was closely tied to an active acquisition and investment program. Kraken completed a $1.5 billion purchase of TradFi derivatives platform NinjaTrader, followed by the acquisition of crypto-native proprietary trading firm Breakout. These deals expanded the group’s footprint beyond spot crypto into futures, options, and proprietary trading.
The company also closed an acquisition of Backed, a firm active in tokenized equities through its xStocks offering, adding another non-crypto asset class to Kraken’s ecosystem. Together, the deals pushed Kraken further into multi-asset execution rather than operating solely as a digital-asset exchange.
Alongside acquisitions, Kraken rolled out its Krak app in June, positioning it as a consumer payments product. The app supports free domestic and international transfers and later added features such as a cashback debit card, salary deposits, and expanded wealth tools.
Why IPO Talk Is Picking Up
The revenue disclosure arrives amid renewed market speculation about a potential public listing. Last week, Kraken-backed special purpose acquisition company KRAKacquisition Corp listed on Nasdaq, raising $345 million in its initial public offering.
That move followed a $200 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities in November, which valued Kraken at $20 billion on a post-money basis. The SPAC listing has drawn attention because it creates an additional route to public markets at a time when crypto companies are re-examining listing options.
While Payward has not confirmed any listing plans, the combination of rising revenue, expanding product lines, and capital markets activity has kept Kraken near the center of IPO discussions.
Investor Takeaway
How Payward Is Pulling the Group Together
Sethi framed Payward as the operating layer that ties Kraken’s expanding set of businesses together. Rather than treating each product as a separate line, the group is built around shared infrastructure supporting trading, custody, payments, and financing.
“Looking forward, Payward’s focus is not on maximizing any single metric in isolation,” Sethi wrote. “It is on maximizing long-run, risk-adjusted throughput across a growing set of asset classes and geographies.”
He added that once the underlying infrastructure is in place, adding new products becomes increasingly efficient. That approach helps explain why Kraken has pushed into areas such as tokenized equities, derivatives, and payments in parallel, rather than sequentially.
