Kraken Secures $800M War Chest as Citadel Securities Bets $200M on Onchain Wall Street

Bitcoin is nearly 30% off its recent all-time high, traders are nervously watching AI valuations and Fed odds, and sentiment across digital assets has slipped back into hesitation mode. Yet behind the red candles, one of crypto’s oldest exchanges is lining up some of the most “TradFi” capital on earth. (Cover: Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi)

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This week, Kraken revealed it has raised $800 million across two funding rounds to accelerate its push into onchain traditional finance. The headline number: a $200 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities at a $20 billion valuation—one of the clearest signals yet that Wall Street’s most elite market makers are stepping directly into crypto’s core infrastructure.

The fresh capital gives Kraken the firepower to scale globally ahead of a planned 2026 U.S. IPO, even as broader crypto markets wobble.

Two Rounds, Two Valuations, One Clear Direction

Kraken’s new capital stack comes in two tranches:

$600 million raised in September at a $15 billion valuation, led by a who’s-who of Wall Street and VC:
Jane Street
DRW Venture Capital
HSG (formerly Sequoia Capital China)
Oppenheimer Alternative Investment Management
Tribe Capital
The family office of Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi
$200 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities at a $20 billion valuation, announced this week.

Kraken also confirmed publicly—for the first time—the details of the earlier $600M round that Bloomberg had reported as in the works back in September.

For a company that had previously raised just $27 million in venture capital, this is a total reset of the balance sheet. The message is clear: Kraken wants to go into its IPO with deep capital reserves, a global footprint, and a product stack that looks less like a “crypto exchange” and more like a full-stack onchain capital markets platform.

Citadel Securities Steps Into the Arena

The Citadel Securities deal is more than just a check.

The nearly 25-year-old firm—founded by Ken Griffin, long known for a cautious stance toward crypto—is now committing capital, market-structure expertise, and risk-management muscle to Kraken’s evolution.

The strategic relationship includes:

Liquidity provision across Kraken’s markets
Risk-management and market-structure collaboration
Deeper integration with Kraken’s vertically integrated infrastructure—spanning:
Spot trading
Derivatives
Equities and tokenized assets (planned)
Custody
Payments
“We’re excited to support Kraken’s continued growth as it helps shape the next chapter of digital innovation in markets. By pairing our expertise in liquidity and market structure with Kraken’s expanding onchain infrastructure, we see a real opportunity to help advance how global markets evolve.”

Jim Esposito, President of Citadel Securities
Citadel’s move marks a stark pivot from its earlier posture. For years, the firm largely stayed on the sidelines of digital assets, citing U.S. regulatory uncertainty. But since the start of the Trump administration, Citadel Securities has reportedly begun preparing to transact on exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and Crypto.com, and earlier this month joined a $500 million raise into Ripple alongside Fortress Investment Group and others.

Now, with a direct equity stake in Kraken, Citadel is no longer circling crypto—it’s inside the walls.

Building Onchain TradFi While Markets Pull Back

Kraken’s fundraise arrives at a pivotal time. According to Barron’s, Bitcoin recently slid to around $91,000, leaving it roughly 28% below its early-October record high. Digital assets have pulled back across the board as investors reassess frothy AI valuations and wait for key macro data that could influence the odds of another Fed rate cut.

Nvidia earnings and forward guidance are now a barometer for risk appetite.
The next U.S. jobs report could tilt the probability of a December rate cut, which has already fallen sharply from its earlier odds.
Public crypto names like Bullish—which went public in August—have seen their shares slide roughly 40% over the last three months.

In other words: the backdrop is choppy, not euphoric.

Yet Kraken is using this moment to lock in premier capital, upgrade its balance sheet, and sprint toward an IPO, rather than wait for perfect macro conditions. It’s a classic build-through-the-cycle move.

Revenue, Expansion, and a Grab for Market Share

Kraken’s momentum is real. The exchange generated about $1.5 billion in revenue last year and had already passed that mark by the third quarter of 2025. Q3 alone hit $648 million, more than doubling year-over-year — a sign of rising institutional activity and deeper global engagement.

With its new $800 million raise, Kraken is now pushing far beyond North America, scaling into Latin America, APAC, and EMEA while building out products like tokenized equities, new payment rails, and the upcoming KRAK app. The capital also fuels continued acquisitions, following its $1.5 billion purchase of NinjaTrader.

Though long overshadowed by Coinbase in the retail spotlight, Kraken has built a loyal base of institutional and advanced traders. This raise cements its shift from “the other U.S. exchange” to a core infrastructure provider for the next wave of onchain capital markets.
As co-CEO Arjun Sethi put it, "Kraken isn’t rushing its IPO — it wants to enter the public markets from a position of strength, not urgency."
Signal Over Noise

Crypto markets are famous for their volatility—and right now, the charts are rolling over again. But while traders obsess over the next Fed move or AI-driven rotation, a quieter story is playing out.

Citadel Securities is backing a major crypto exchange at a $20 billion valuation.
Ripple has raised $500 million from some of the same traditional finance heavyweights.
Kraken has pulled in $800 million in under three months, more than 30x what it had raised in its entire prior history.

Prices may be down. Volatility may be back. But capital, strategy, and long-term infrastructure moves are telling a different story: the onchain version of Wall Street is being built right now—one big check at a time.