Kraken#20

Arjun Sethi@arjunsethi

We just announced that @krakenfx has raised $800M, a milestone that reflects years of work, discipline, and conviction. I am proud of what our team has built and grateful for the partners who chose to join us. But this is not a post about a fundraise. I want to share the side of the story people rarely talk about. The truth behind what it actually takes to build an enduring company. The real story lives long before the headlines. It is about conviction when the world questions you, partnership when few are willing to stand with you, and the choices you make when things are hard rather than celebratory. When I think about the last decade, people often ask where my conviction for crypto and financial infrastructure came from. Before @tribecap, I spent years working alongside some of the best quantitative and growth minds in the world. These were the people who built the analytical systems and growth engines behind the largest trillion dollar companies in the world. Learning from them shaped how I think about data, experimentation, compounding outcomes, and decision making at scale. At a certain point, I felt the need to put those frameworks and hypotheses into practice. That decision led to the creation of Tribe Capital. I am fortunate that many of the same people who taught me those frameworks and worked with me in those earlier chapters eventually became my partners. Together, we set out to build a firm grounded in data, truth seeking, and conviction. Starting in June 2018, we built Tribe across multiple asset classes with a data driven mindset, beginning with early stage venture and later expanding into crypto. By 2020, we launched our crypto funds because the evidence pointed to a fundamental shift in how global financial systems would be rebuilt. In 2022, everything changed. Public markets sold off. US markets lost nearly $11T in market value that year. crypto lost more than $1T in market cap. Fear was everywhere. Some of our more conservative LPs who had lost money in FTX urged me to step away from crypto entirely. They told me to wind down, settle positions, and avoid challenging the institutions who were now pointing fingers at the entire space. Many of our LPs were not reacting to data or long term outcomes. They were reacting to reputational fear. They cared more about protecting themselves than protecting the institutions they represented. Venture, at its core, is supposed to be about partnership, long term innovation, and return multiples earned through conviction. Yet in that moment, a meaningful group lost sight of that. They wanted safety, not truth. Optics, not alignment. And they asked us to behave the same way. At the same time, private markets and venture financing were effectively frozen until the release of ChatGPT reignited belief in long term innovation and infrastructure. And during that same period, I was personally debanked by SVB, FRB, and others. Quietly and without explanation. And yet that moment became the period in which we made our strongest decisions. Instead of stepping back, we stepped forward. We deployed more capital in 2022, 2023, and 2024 than in the years before. Looking back, those became some of the best investments we have ever made. As demand temporarily declined, our conviction increased. Prices reset. Our entry positions became exceptional. And we put significant capital behind the founders and companies we believed would define the next decade. Part of that effort led us to help cofound Kapital, a regulated bank serving customers in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru. Kapital has been profitable since day one. Today it is worth more than $1.5B and is on track to exceed $400M in revenue. I am grateful to the team that built it with us and proud of what we have created together. Throughout this period, I continued to spend my time and attention on the companies I believed would grow regardless of the market cycle. This is the part of the story that matters. @jespow, a partner, a friend, and someone I deeply respect, chose to bet on me at the exact moment I was betting more on him. When many people were retreating, Jesse leaned in. When others questioned whether the industry had a future, he committed to building. Trust like that is rare. Alignment like that is even more rare. And that shared conviction is what ultimately led me to join Kraken full time. We stayed focused on the data. We stayed focused on the long run. Since the downturn, Tribe has deployed another $500M into our highest conviction companies. We built deeper alignment with the businesses we believed would matter over the next decade. And one of those companies was Kraken, which became a central part of my journey with Jesse Powell and the conviction we shared about where this industry was heading. When I became Co-CEO of Kraken, that conviction became personal. I doubled down with my time, my capital, and my full attention. If I was going to lead the company, I needed to be fully aligned with its future. That meant investing not only through Tribe Capital but also through our own family office. My parents and my family, including my kids, supported me, and I love them for their support and their capital. Together, we helped shape the first tranche of the new round at a time when Kraken had raised only $27M in primary capital, and we committed more than $100M with belief in what Kraken could become. I am grateful to the partners who joined alongside me in that first tranche, including DRW, HongShan, formerly Sequoia China, Jane Street, Oppenheimer, IMC, Wintermute, and many others. Their willingness to step in at a crucial moment strengthened the foundation for everything that followed. And I am proud to welcome Citadel Securities as our partner in the second tranche, bringing total capital raised to $800M for Kraken. Their conviction reflects the strength of the work we have done and the long term opportunity ahead. Here is what I want people to take away from this journey. Fundraising is never easy. Not when you are early. Not when you have traction. Not when the market is against you. Not even when the market turns in your favor. What matters is whether you lose your values along the way. Many people do. It is the easiest shortcut in the world. We did not. Kraken did not. Tribe Capital did not. We stayed committed to our culture, our mission, and our values. We chose partners who believe in resilience, transparency, and long term thinking. Partners who believe that financial infrastructure should be open, global, and accessible. Many of these partners have supported us through multiple cycles, and I am grateful for them. Now we are focused on what comes next. A unified liquidity and collateral system. A new architecture for financial services. A global platform that brings traditional and open finance together for everyone. This journey has never been about being right in any single moment. It has always been about staying right over the long run. Arjun https://t.co/17rvyzEHoV

𝗗𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗 𝗕𝗢𝗡𝗚𝗢@DreadBong0

🟣 @krakenfx are set to begin listing #Bittensor subnet alpha tokens First subnets to be listed are.. @chutes_ai @TargonCompute @webuildscore @lium_io @ridges_ai @hippius_subnet @VantaTrading 👉 https://t.co/m7BCpNLoN7 @krakenfx is the first major global exchange to expand their support for the #Bittensor ecosystem 👏 $TAO

Jesse Powell@jespow

Sorry about your monopoly. Thank you @SenLummis, @GovernorGordon, the great state of Wyoming and @CaitlinLong_. Well done, @arjunsethi and the @krakenfx team. The end is the beginning is the end. We're the bankers now. Saddle up. 🤠🇺🇸🚀

Arjun Sethi@arjunsethi

Building the Next Layer At Kraken, we are integrating INK, the native token of our Layer Two protocol, into core products across the company. This is not just a product update. It is the beginning of a new system design. We have spent years scaling infrastructure to support global demand for crypto trading, custody, payments, and funding. But most of what exists today, on chain and off chain, is still fragmented. Users deal with disconnected wallets, brittle bridges, synthetic representations of assets, and complex user flows. We think there is a better way. INK is the first part of it. A New Execution Layer Ink is an Ethereum-compatible Layer Two network. It is fast, inexpensive, built for scale, and optimized for financial applications. What makes it different is how we are using it. We are not building an experimental side project or a speculative ecosystem. We are embedding Ink directly into the product surface of Kraken. That includes wallets, trading, funding, rewards, and more. It is not a separate experience. It is the infrastructure layer for what comes next. Users will not need to think about it. They will simply get lower fees, faster settlement, and native onchain functionality by default. A Token With Purpose INK is governed by the Ink Foundation. Not by Kraken. We helped design the protocol. We do not control it. The token exists to coordinate activity on the network. It pays for transactions, governs upgrades, supports builders, and rewards participation. INK will be part of the Kraken Drops program. We are preparing a token distribution for eligible clients. But again, this is not about speculation. The goal is clear. Move real financial activity onchain. In production. With real users solving real problems. What Comes Next Over time, more of Kraken will run onchain. The boundary between products and protocol will become less visible. Wallets will settle directly through Ink. Trading will tap into onchain liquidity. Payments and identity will run as protocol-level functionality, not layered services. We will keep contributing to Ink, releasing INK-based products, and supporting developers. But the most important ideas will come from outside us. If you are building something that needs to be faster, simpler, more composable, and more open, Ink is ready. This is one part of a larger shift. Not everything needs to live on chain. But everything should be designable as if it could.

Mayne@Tradermayne

Guys need some no bullshit feedback If you use Kraken: What do you hate about it? What’s the worst part or totally missing? If you don’t use Kraken: Why not and what would change your mind? You can be as harsh as you like, I’ll take your feedback and it’ll go straight to leadership

Jesse Powell@jespow

Hashtag Beastmode. Hashtag Meat in the Game. Hashtag I shoulda hired @arjunsethi 10 years ago. Unbelievable first year run as co-CEO. I hate dilution but the quality and alignment of this last round of investors is insane. I'm more optimistic about @krakenfx than ever. 🫡🐙🚀