Kraken is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States. The company offers cryptocurrency exchange, over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk, and futures trading platform. This article will provide a detailed overview of the company's main business lines.

Kraken was founded in 2011 and has since become one of the largest cryptocurrency spot exchanges in the world, based on bitcoin trading volume. In 2013, after two years of development and testing, the California-based exchange launched the public beta version of its trading platform. Since then, Kraken has raised $13.5 million from over 2,000 individual investors through crowdfunding platforms like BnktotheFuture, valuing the company at $4 billion at the time.

Under the leadership of CEO and co-founder Jesse Powell, Kraken has made various acquisitions to improve its infrastructure and recruited key members of the core team to expand its business lines, including Steve Hunt, Vice President of Engineering, who joined from Jump Trading, and Nelson Minier, OTC Director, who comes from Credit Suisse.

The exchange operator's struggle with regulatory agencies has never stopped, particularly in New York. In fact, Powell has compared the New York regulatory agency to "an abusive, controlling ex". Kraken does not hold a BitLicense, a license required for virtual currency activities, in the state and therefore cannot provide services to residents of the jurisdiction. Several years ago, Kraken left New York, although it still has employees working there. However, as previously reported by CoinDesk, Kraken has been working with regulators in Wyoming in recent months to develop an alternative model to what they believe is a more reasonable approach than New York's.

Kraken has three main business lines: the cryptocurrency exchange, the OTC trading desk, and the futures trading platform.

The exchange is Kraken's flagship product. Since the beginning of 2019, fueled by the rise in bitcoin prices, the trading volume of its most popular trading pair (BTC/USD) has grown nearly fourfold.

Based on data from CoinGecko, Kraken's trading volume in the past 24 hours is approximately $212 million. Over the past month, Kraken's total trading volume amounted to $3.7 billion.

However, according to data compiled by TheBlock, the exchange accounted for only 7.9% of the total market volume in August.

The company currently supports trading pairs for 96 different cryptocurrencies, including 38 coin-to-coin trading pairs and 58 fiat-to-cryptocurrency trading pairs, including Augur, Basic Attention Token, and Bitcoin. In an interview with TheBlock, Powell hinted at accelerating the listing process.

He said, "We want to be selective about the coins we list, but we're backlogged on a bunch of coins that we'd like to list, a lot of them being tokens customers want to see on Kraken. We also have some good coins that don't have a lot of buzz."

In February of this year, Kraken acquired UK-based startup Crypto Facilities for $100 million to enter the booming cryptocurrency derivatives market. The company was subsequently rebranded as Kraken Futures and began offering cash-settled derivatives products, including BTC, BCH, XRP, LTC, and ETH. The business is operated by Crypto Facilities founder Timo Schlaefer.

These products are traded on a monthly or quarterly basis. According to CoinDesk data, Kraken Futures achieved nearly $1 billion in trading volume in its first month after the acquisition. Kraken told TheBlock that Kraken Futures has achieved "over 10 times growth since the acquisition." They believe the growth is due to their revenue sharing program and the "seamless integration" between their spot and futures platforms.

Kraken's OTC trading desk was launched in 2016 as a channel for facilitating large-volume trades for specific clients. The liquidity for this business comes from their exchange, but the trades are not reflected in the exchange's main order book to avoid causing significant market fluctuations. This business covers global regions, with team members distributed in San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

This business is primarily overseen by Nelson Minier, a seasoned professional with 20 years of experience on Wall Street. In an interview with The Scoop, Minier defined their OTC clients as institutions and high-net-worth individuals. He said, "We do particularly well with the whales. They want a white-glove service, they know they're going to trade a lot of volume, and so they want to make sure they are talking to someone and if that someone can carry out their whole order, even better…"

Minier further explained that Kraken operates a principal desk, meaning they use their own capital to facilitate trades. He stated in The Scoop's interview, "We are only able to have principal positions where we are trading with our own balances as the principal. So if you come to us and want to sell 1,000 bitcoins, it's o