• founded by Jesse Powell in 2011, Kraken is a U.S based cryptocurrency exchange and bank that was created to give people the ability to safely and quickly invest in cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.

• Powell started Kraken shortly after the major hack of Mt. Gox, which resulted in over 850,000 Bitcoins stolen from the exchange. The distrust and shortcomings of cryptocurrency exchanges were what motivated Jesse to build a better exchange that users could trust (1).

• Kraken has been through 8 funding rounds, reaching a total of $118.5 Million in funding. In 2014, they recieved a Series A investment of $5 Million from Hummingbird Ventures, along with other prominent FinTech VCs Barry Silbert and Trace Meyer (2). Kraken currently has over 176 employees according to LinkedIn (6).

• Kraken aims to make cryptocurrency available and accessible to anyone and everyone, while promoting their audience to invest in their independence. What makes Kraken different is there abiity to support and offer 5 fiat trading pairs, which most other crypto exchanges do not. This feature allows users to use more stable and less volatile national currencies like JPY, GBP, USD, etc, giving them more security similar to a bank (3).

• Kraken uses blockchain technology for financial services between cryptocurrencies, business management, and record keeping. The components of blockchain are cryptography, distributed ledger, and smart contracts.These components allow individuals to facilitate transactions on chain, which then must be verified by all parties involved before confirming.

• Kraken is classified as a Bitcoin Exchange; however, on September 17th, 2020, they claimed the title for first U.S crypto bank, receiving a bank charter for Kraken Financials (5).

• The major trends and innovations in the FinTech industry has been the increase in permissionless, and decentralized financial tools that allow users to be their own bank without any regulations or denied permission to send or recieve money. Other companies in this domain are Capital One, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Paypal, etc. The difference between their competitors are the ability to offer both digital and fiat currencies, while Capital One, Mastercard and others cannot.

• Kraken has made a major impact in the bitcoin exchange and most recently banking domain, allowing U.S residents to have a bank that supports both fiat and crpyto assets. This milestone also makes Kraken the first cryptocurrency exchange to charter a U.S bank, which is now known is Kraken Financial (4). Kraken's team of data analysts and engineers provide an easy to use API for other data analysts to use and measure success from current and competing markets; in fact,

• Compared to it's competitors, Kraken has been performing above par, averaging over $1.6 Billion in daily trading volume, while also soon to be the second crypto company to IPO early 2022 (7). Since the Mt Gox hack recovery in 2014, Kraken has paved the way as one of the top performing crypto exchanges.

• One service I would recommend, would be to consider adding a 'Kraken Academy'. In other words, an educational section dedicated to teaching new users about Blockchain as well as other features that make Kraken better than it's competitors. This service would benefit the company because it will introduce millions of users who are looking for a new centralized exchange, to learn about Kraken and it's benefits.

• The technologies utilized for this service would be to integrate an educational section for miniclips and a way for users to pay for the course and earn rewards for completing the course along with other tasks.

• These technologies are appropriate for this solution because it would not require much of a change, but simply a newer section for users to be incentivized to intereact with the Kraken Platform or on the Kraken Academy course.

(1).

• Author: Seth Shobhit
• Date: April 5th, 2021
• Availability: https://www.investopedia.com/tech/what-kraken/

(2).

• Availability: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kraken

(3).

• Author: kraken.com
• Availability: https://www.kraken.com/en-us/why-kraken/

(4).

• Author: Sarah Horvath
• Date: August 14th, 2019
• Availability: https://www.benzinga.com/money/kraken-alternative/

(5).

• Author: Nate DiCamillo
• Date: September 17th, 2020
• Availability: https://www.coindesk.com/kraken-crypto-exchange-secures-bank-charter-under-wyoming-law

(6).

• Availability: https://www.linkedin.com/company/krakenfx

(7).

• Author: capital.com
• Date: March 31, 2021
• Availability: https://capital.com/kraken-considers-going-public-in-2022