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Adjusted revenue is down from $628 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, for instance, while adjusted EBITDA dropped to $18 million from $168 million in the same period the year before.
Sethi noted the firm’s collapsing EBITDA is "due to a deliberate choice to continue investing through the cycle to accelerate product innovation, expand the breadth of our platform, and expand the regulatory stack that powers our multi-asset product offerings."
Indeed, Sethi has noted in several recent statements that the firm is investing heavily in acquisitions, product development, and growth initiatives, as it gears up for a potential public listing. However, any IPO plans may be on pause, as the firm’s valuation readjusts amid a cooling crypto market.
In November, Kraken raised funds at a $20 billion valuation and filed confidentially for a public listing, following a recent crypto rally. However, Bloomberg reported that Deutsche Börse Group invested $200 million in Kraken in April for a 1.5% fully diluted ownership stake, implying a $13.3 billion valuation.
Bloomberg reported Friday that any potential IPO may be pushed back to 2027.
Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of crypto’s oldest operating trading venues. Like other crypto exchange operators, Payward is looking to break out of the cryptocurrency trading niche — particularly with its xStocks equities trading and commodity futures offerings — and has made several notable acquisitions over the past year.
These buyouts include Backed, which now supports Kraken’s tokenized equities offering, token lifecycle management firm Magna, and Bitnomial, which helped the firm scale up its derivatives business, particularly in the U.S. Kraken is also working to close its acquisition of global stablecoin payments and card company Reap, targeted for the latter half of the year.
Kraken is also building capabilities for B2B institutional investment products, APIs, and infrastructure offerings, such as investment strategies run by Bitwise Asset Management and the end-to-end protocol launch platform Kraken 360. It has also expanded its consumer-facing yield products.
Sethi suggested these investments are starting to pay off as the firm’s revenue mix is now "more resilient." Kraken’s spot volume market share increased from ~3.5% mid-2025 to a high of 5.2% in March 2026, while the firm’s Asset on Platform metric grew 11% year-over-year to $40 billion, and the number of funded accounts increased 47% year-over-year to 6.1 million.
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"Payward’s first quarter of 2026 demonstrates the durability of our platform strategy and the resilience of a business built to perform across cycles," Sethi wrote. "Our multi-asset superinfrastructure is built to serve clients across asset classes, market conditions, and geographies. The platform operating today is broader, deeper, and more resilient than it was a year ago."
This suggests some resilience despite the drawdown in Bitcoin’s price from an all-time high set last fall. That said, the firm reportedly cut 150 employees last week.