Kraken Launches Its Own Bank “Very Soon”
Important takeaways
- Kraken Bank is on track to launch soon, according to Kraken legal director Marco Santori.
- Kraken initially won bank charter approval in 2020.
- The bank, entirely online, will offer “comprehensive deposit, custody and trust services for digital assets.”
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The crypto industry may be suffering from a regulatory breach in the US, but that’s not stopping Kraken from trying to start its own bank.
Kraken Bank
The current regulatory climate does not scare Kraken.
The crypto exchange’s chief legal officer Marco Santori confirmed on The Scoop podcast that Kraken will soon launch its own bank. “Kraken Bank is very much on track to launch, very soon,” he said. “We’re going to have those pens with the little ball chains. We’re going to order thousands of them and stick them to the desks of Wall Street banks everywhere. With our logo.”
Kraken initially secured the state of Wyoming’s approval to form a Special Purpose Depository Institution (SPDI) in 2020. According to the company, Kraken Bank was the “first digital asset company in US history to receive a banking charter recognized under federal and state law,” and will be the first regulated US bank to offer “comprehensive deposit, custody and trust services for digital assets.”
Kraken Bank, headquartered in Cheyenne, was originally slated to launch in 2021, then launch in phases through 2022. Santori’s comments suggest that despite setbacks and delays, Kraken Bank may finally be within reach. The bank indicated that the services will first be rolled out to existing US-based Kraken customers, with a potential international expansion in the future. The bank does not plan to offer personal services, instead keeping all operations online and via mobile devices.
Santori also addressed the regulatory crackdown that the crypto industry is currently facing in the United States. Kraken recently reached a $30 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over its betting program, which it was ordered to shut down in the US. Crypto executives have also accused the government of trying to cut off the crypto industry from the banking industry by putting pressure on the banks themselves.
“We’re going back to a time where banks are going to be very careful about what accounts they open,” Santori said. “Wall Street is going to be fine. Kraken and Coinbase are going to be fine. But the guy or gal who has a new idea of how to provide infrastructure to the crypto economy, it’s going to be a very tough road in the next few years for them. No questions.”
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH and several other crypto assets.
