Kraken Statistics 2026: Users, Revenue and Volume Data

Kraken ended June 2026 with 6.6 million funded accounts, up 42% year over year, while its parent company Payward, Inc. booked $508 million in adjusted revenue for the quarter, a 17% annual increase. Those two figures moved in the same direction even though total platform transaction volume fell 18% year over year to $310 billion. The Kraken statistics that follow all trace to Payward’s own quarterly letters, Kraken’s published reserve data, and US regulator filings.

The gap between shrinking volume and growing revenue is the part the raw trading numbers hide. Payward now draws 60% of total revenue from asset-based and other sources, up from 55% a year earlier. A majority of what the company earns no longer comes from trading fees at all.

Key Takeaways

• Funded accounts reached 6.6 million in the second quarter of 2026, after 6.1 million three months earlier.
• Asset-based and other revenue crossed from 55% of total revenue to 60% in a single year, inverting the old fee-driven model.
• Kraken’s spot volume share climbed from approximately 3.5% in mid-2025 to a high of 5.2% in March 2026 while the wider market contracted.
• Payward held 59% of its December 2024 spot volume in March 2026, against a roughly 27% retention rate at its largest competitors.
• The June 2026 Proof of Reserves snapshot put Bitcoin reserves at 102.9% and Ether at 100.5% of client balances.
• Regulators have taken $30 million from Payward entities in a single SEC settlement and $1.25 million in a CFTC civil monetary penalty.
• CoinGecko lists Kraken with 732 coins across 1,465 trading pairs, far beyond the eight assets covered by the reserve attestation.

Editor’s Choice

• Adjusted revenue: $508 million in the second quarter of 2026.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $23 million.
• Assets on platform: $40 billion, with real assets on platform up 48% year over year to $65 billion.
• Total platform transaction volume: $310 billion in the quarter.
• Tokenized equities: xStocks passed $40 billion in total volume across over 200,000 holders.
• Reach: live in all 30 countries of the European Economic Area under a MiCA license.

Kraken Statistics: Revenue and Profitability by Quarter

Figures come from 19 captured excerpts across 11 sources. Fifteen are tier 1 primary documents: Payward shareholder letters, Kraken product pages, and SEC and CFTC enforcement releases. Publication dates span February 2023 to September 2026, and every financial figure is drawn from 2026. Sources are qualified only if they were the issuing entity or an official register, and figures are updated when Payward publishes a new quarter.

• Payward reported $508 million in adjusted revenue for the second quarter of 2026, up 17% year over year.
• The prior quarter delivered $507 million, an increase of 3% against the same period a year earlier.
• Adjusted EBITDA came in at $23 million in the June quarter.
• The March quarter produced adjusted EBITDA of $18 million.
• Payward described proactively aligning its cost structure with market conditions in May while protecting its highest-priority growth spending.
• Revenue growth was broad rather than concentrated, with traditional futures, equities, and tokenized equities activity growing as spot volumes declined across the industry.
• Futures activity contributed directly, as Futures DARTs (Daily Average Revenue Trades) grew 8% year over year.

Source: Payward Q1 and Q2 2026 shareholder letters, 2026

Revenue that rises while volume falls is unusual enough in exchange reporting to be worth stating plainly. It means the revenue is coming from somewhere other than the order book. The clearest place to look next is who is actually holding a balance on the platform.

Kraken Funded Accounts and User Growth

• Payward closed the June 2026 quarter with 6.6 million funded accounts, a 42% increase year over year.
• The March 2026 quarter recorded 6.1 million funded accounts, up 47% year over year.
• A funded account is a distinct customer account that maintained a balance greater than zero as of the last day of the fiscal quarter, which is a stricter bar than a registration count.
• The metric is not a headcount of people, because sub-accounts are counted as separate accounts for purposes of this metric.
• Payward attributed the growth to particular momentum in markets where its regulatory position is strongest.
• Client balances told the same story, with real assets on platform growing 48% year over year to $65 billion once price movement is stripped out.
• Payward said client balances grew for the fourth consecutive quarter, even as asset prices declined.

Our 80-plus statistics pages tell a story price charts do not: adoption metrics keep climbing through drawdowns. Kraken’s account curve through the first half of 2026 is another instance. It is why we lead with accounts rather than volume. Anyone comparing this against a wider cryptocurrency exchange cohort should note that account definitions differ sharply between venues.

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Recent Developments

• September 2026: Kraken Prime will serve as an additional source of liquidity behind SoFi’s crypto offering, and Payward will list SoFiUSD on Kraken.
• September 2026: Payward announced it will tokenize the top 100 London-listed stocks as xStocks, reaching investors in more than 110 countries.
• August 2026: Payward reported adjusted revenue of $508 million for the second quarter.
• June 2026: Payward completed its latest quarterly Proof of Reserves, validated by a third-party accounting firm, The Network Firm.
• May 2026: The DeFi Earn Bitcoin Vault launched and has drawn approximately $400 million in deposits.
• May 2026: Payward filed an OCC National Trust Company application, adding to a licensing pipeline that also produced VARA preliminary approval in the UAE.

Kraken Revenue Mix: Trading Fees vs Asset-Based Income

• Asset-based and other revenue moved from 55% of total revenue in Q2 2025 to 60% in Q2 2026.
• Payward described the result as a growing majority of the platform’s revenue now coming from assets and services rather than trading fees.
• Payward called 2026 its largest trading investment year ever.
• Payward described growth as broad-based, with no single part of the business carrying the quarter alone.
• Payward also reported spot market share gains for the third consecutive quarter.

Source: Payward Q2 2026 shareholder letter, 2026

By the numbers: Payward’s asset-based and other revenue rose from 55% of total revenue in Q2 2025 to 60% in Q2 2026, while total platform transaction volume fell 18% to $310 billion. A majority of the parent company’s revenue now comes from balances and services rather than from trading fees.

Read the two movements together, and the business looks less like an exchange and more like a custodian that also runs a matching engine. The volume line underneath that mix is worth its own look.

Kraken Platform Transaction Volume by Quarter

• Total platform transaction volume reached $310 billion in the second quarter of 2026, down 18% year over year.
• The prior quarter recorded $357 billion in total platform transaction volume.
• Payward defines the metric as the aggregate notional value, expressed in US dollar terms, of transactions executed across Payward’s platforms during the period presented.
• That definition is wider than spot alone, covering Spot, Margin, Crypto Futures, Instant Buy & Sell, OTC & Prime Spot, Equities, and xStocks.
• Payward noted that industry spot volume fell 38% in the March quarter.
• Prices moved against the platform in the same window, as Bitcoin price fell 22% in the quarter and total crypto market cap fell 23%.
• Within the fall, the mix rotated, with spot declining industry-wide while equities and tokenized equities posted significant growth.

Source: Payward Q1 and Q2 2026 shareholder letters, 2026

Volume of any kind is reported, not audited. For a reader judging counterparty risk, reserve attestation carries more weight.

Kraken Proof of Reserves Ratios by Asset

• The most recent snapshot is dated June 30, 2026.
• Bitcoin balances were covered at a 102.9% reserve ratio.
• Ether sat at 100.5% and Solana at 100.6%.
• XRP was covered at 102.3% and Cardano at 100.3%.
• The three stablecoins in scope were each reported at 105%+.
• Payward states the review is validated by a third-party accounting firm, The Network Firm.
• The company describes the procedure as an advanced cryptographic accounting procedure conducted regularly rather than a continuous audit.

Above 100% means verified on-chain holdings exceeded client balances in the Merkle tree at that instant. The proof of reserves methodology matters as much as the headline percentage, because a snapshot covers one moment rather than a period. Coverage extends to eight assets. Kraken’s listing surface is far wider.

How Many Cryptocurrencies Kraken Supports

• CoinGecko’s exchange record lists Kraken with 732 coins.
• The same record counts 1,465 trading pairs.
• Kraken cites access to over 450 digital assets, with continued expansion under its MiCA license.
• CoinMarketCap is more conservative, describing over 100 crypto assets and 7 fiat currencies.
• CoinGecko records the exchange as established in 2011 and based in the United States.
• The reserve attestation covers only BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, ADA, USDC, USDT, and USDG.

Source: CoinGecko exchange API, Kraken newsroom and CoinMarketCap, September 2026

That spread is a reminder that listing totals are not standardised. The figures measure different things at different moments.

Kraken Reported 24-Hour Trading Volume Across Trackers

• CoinMarketCap reported Kraken spot trading volume of $853,695,781.16 over 24 hours.
• The same page expressed that as 10,680 BTC.
• CoinGecko’s API recorded a 24-hour trade volume of 10,394.32 BTC on the same day.
• The two readings differ by roughly 2.7%, despite covering the same public markets over the same window.
• Neither figure is comparable to Payward’s own aggregate notional value of transactions executed across Payward’s platforms, which spans products a spot tracker never sees.
• CoinMarketCap’s own profile text describes Kraken as a US-based cryptocurrency exchange where users can buy, sell, and trade various assets with relatively low commissions.
• CoinGecko scores the venue at a trust score of 10 and a trust score rank of 3, which is a liquidity measure rather than a size measure.
• The two BTC readings sit roughly 286 bitcoin apart on the same 24-hour window.
• CoinGecko records the venue as established in 2011 and centralized.

Source: CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, September 6 2026

Worth noting: Two public trackers pulled within 30 seconds of each other on September 6, 2026 disagreed on Kraken’s 24-hour spot volume by roughly 2.7%, or about 286 bitcoin. Neither reading matches Payward’s own Total Platform Transaction Volume, which the company defines to include margin, futures, OTC, equities and xStocks.

What are the top 3 crypto exchanges?

Ranking depends on the metric. On CoinGecko’s own scoring, Kraken carries a trust score of 10 and a trust score rank of 3. That score weighs liquidity rather than size, so a top three built on reported volume looks different.

Kraken Spot Market Share and Volume Retention

• Kraken’s spot volume share climbed from approximately 3.5% in mid-2025 to a high of 5.2% in March 2026.
• Measured against the December 2024 peak, Payward retained 59% of its spot volume in March 2026.
• Its largest competitors showed a roughly 27% retention rate.
• The company framed that gap as 2.2x the retention rate of its largest competitors.
• Share gains continued into the June quarter, with spot market share gains for the third consecutive quarter.
• The backdrop was severe, since industry spot volume fell 38% over the same period.

Key finding: Payward reports retaining 59% of its December 2024 peak spot volume as of March 2026, against a 27% retention rate at its largest competitors. Retention rather than headline volume is where the competitive divergence shows, because every venue’s absolute volume fell in the same window.

Those retention figures are company analysis, not independent measurement. Wider crypto exchange market share data uses different denominators again. Holding share through a downturn is partly a licensing story, and the licence book is unusually deep.

Kraken Regulatory Penalties and Enforcement History

• The SEC charged Payward Ventures, Inc. and Payward Trading Ltd., both commonly known as Kraken, in February 2023.
• The charge concerned failing to register the offer and sale of their crypto asset staking-as-a-service program.
• Kraken had advertised annual investment returns of as much as 21% on that program.
• The two entities paid $30 million in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties.
• They also agreed to immediately cease offering or selling securities through crypto asset staking services or staking programs.
• Payward Ventures separately paid a $1.25 million civil monetary penalty.
• That order covered illegally offering margined retail commodity transactions in digital assets, including Bitcoin, and failing to register as a futures commission merchant.

Source: SEC press release 2023-25 and CFTC press release 8433-21, 2023 and 2021

Both orders are published in full by the regulators that issued them, in the SEC press release and the CFTC press release.

We have documented this sequence across regulatory events on both sides of the Atlantic. Enforcement lands first, and licensing frameworks follow. The firms that survive the first phase tend to be the ones that spent the interval accumulating permissions. Kraken’s licence book is the second half of that pattern.

Kraken Licensing and Global Regulatory Footprint

• Kraken is live in all 30 countries of the European Economic Area under its MiCA licence.
• That entity is authorized by the Central Bank of Ireland.
• The licence enables passporting of regulated services across all 30 EEA countries.
• In the June 2026 quarter, Payward secured VARA preliminary approval in the UAE for a broker-dealer, investment and management license.
• It also secured Virtual Asset Service Provider registrations from the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission.
• An OCC National Trust Company application was filed in May 2026.

Source: Payward Q2 2026 shareholder letter and Kraken newsroom, 2025 and 2026

Licences like these take years to assemble. They behave more like durable assets than compliance overhead. They are also what let the tokenized-equity business distribute across borders.

xStocks and Kraken’s Tokenized Equity Volume

• xStocks have passed more than $40 billion in total volume in just over a year.
• Of that total, more than $20 billion settled onchain.
• The framework reaches over 200,000 holders.
• Payward’s own scale page records more than $10 billion in xStocks volume within the first 6 months.
• The next expansion covers the top 100 London-listed stocks, reaching investors in more than 110 countries.
• The wider equities push began with launching 11,000+ stocks and ETFs and introducing xStocks.
• Distribution widened in the June quarter, with BNB Chain, Mantle, and Bitget Wallet going live.

Tokenized equities are the newest layer on a fourteen-year record. Earlier layers made the newest one possible. Readers tracking how this compares against Ethereum settlement activity will find the onchain share the most transferable figure.

Kraken Company Milestones and First-Mover Record

• Jesse Powell co-founded Kraken in July 2011 after being brought in to help Mt. Gox recover from a security attack.
• In 2014, Kraken became the first exchange to announce a verifiable cryptographic Proof of Reserves audit.
• The same year, it became the first to provide complete Bitcoin market data to the Bloomberg Terminal.
• In 2015, Kraken became the first exchange to offer both crypto spot and futures on one platform.
• It was also the first platform to list Ethereum’s native token.
• In 2019, Kraken received the first SPDI digital asset bank charter in Wyoming.
• The company later closed an $800 million funding round led by Citadel, Jane Street, Oppenheimer, and Tribe Capital.
• Payward now counts 16 interfaces and 9 products launched in 2025.

How many people work at Kraken?

Payward publishes no headcount, and no primary filing in this dataset states one. Its only workforce reference is that it proactively aligned its cost structure with market conditions in May of that year. Figures circulating elsewhere trace only to secondary outlets that fail CoinLaw’s sourcing bar, so no employee number is published here rather than repeating one that cannot be verified.

Fourteen years in, the two questions readers still ask are about size and about safety.

Who is bigger, Coinbase or Kraken?

Kraken is the smaller of the two on every public measure, but the comparison is less clean than it looks. Payward reports $508 million in adjusted revenue and 6.6 million funded accounts for the second quarter of 2026. Both figures cover the whole Payward group rather than the Kraken exchange alone.

Definitions are the problem. Payward’s funded-account metric counts distinct customer accounts that maintained a balance greater than zero and treats sub-accounts as separate accounts, which is not how every venue counts.

Its volume metric spans Spot, Margin, Crypto Futures, Instant Buy & Sell, OTC & Prime Spot, Equities, and xStocks. A like-for-like ranking needs matched definitions on both sides, and the head-to-head Coinbase and Kraken data sets those out metric by metric.

A ranking of Coinbase against Kraken built on reported volume alone will disagree with one built on revenue. The same caution applies to Binance, whose reported figures cover a different product mix again.

Is Kraken a reliable crypto exchange?

Verifiable evidence points two ways at once. Both directions belong in the answer. On the transparency side, the June 2026 snapshot put Bitcoin reserves at 102.9% and Ether at 100.5%. The review is validated by a third-party accounting firm, The Network Firm, and Kraken is live in all 30 EEA countries under a Central Bank of Ireland MiCA licence.

On the enforcement side, the SEC took $30 million in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties, and the CFTC imposed a $1.25 million civil monetary penalty. Reserve attestations describe a single moment rather than a period, and they cover eight assets out of hundreds listed. Readers weighing custody risk against the convenience of on-platform crypto and fiat transfers should read the ratio and the enforcement record together, not one instead of the other.

Conclusion

The defining number in Kraken’s data is not the $310 billion in platform volume. It is the 6.6 million funded accounts sitting behind it, because accounts grew while volume fell. Revenue followed the accounts rather than the order book, reaching $508 million for the quarter as asset-based income crossed 60% of the total.

Our editorial view is that the next two quarters will be read through the licence book rather than the volume line. If the OCC application and the MiCA passport keep converting into balances the way the first half of 2026 did, the volume figure becomes the least informative number on the page. Anyone tracking that shift will also want the on-chain settlement figures from networks like Solana and Polygon, where tokenized-asset flows land.