What is Kraken?

Kraken is one of crypto's founding-era exchanges, launched in 2011 by Jesse Powell and now serving more than 10 million users across 190 countries under parent company Payward. A November $800 million raise valued the group at $20 billion, and a confidential IPO filing followed alongside acquisitions including futures brokerage NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion and tokenized-equity issuer Backed Finance.

For perpetual traders, Kraken occupies a position no other venue holds. It pairs a derivatives engine dating back to its Crypto Facilities acquisition with the deepest regulatory coverage in the industry, which now extends to regulated perpetuals for US clients, a market every offshore rival is locked out of. The broader shift toward licensed venues is covered in our guide to perpetual exchange regulation.

Kraken Perpetual Futures Fees

Kraken charges 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker fees on perpetual futures at the base tier, published on the official fee schedule, with the second tier stepping down to 0.015% and 0.04%. Tier qualification is unusually broad, counting 30-day volume across spot, margin, and futures together plus assets held on platform, so traders active in one product earn discounts in all of them.

Fee currency depends on contract type. Single-collateral contracts charge fees in the contract's own cryptocurrency, while multi-collateral contracts charge in USD and convert other holdings automatically in ascending order of collateral haircut when USD runs short. Forced liquidations execute at the index price outside the order book and carry a 2% liquidation fee. On the separate US-regulated venue, Kraken Derivatives US, perpetuals are priced as a flat $0.15 per contract per side instead of percentage fees. Accounts opened through a Kraken referral code receive a standing discount on the global platform.

How Kraken Funding Rates Work

Kraken settles perpetual funding every hour, one of the only major venues to depart from the industry's 8-hour standard. Per the exchange's own contract specifications, the premium between contract and index price is measured hourly, applied to positions as unrealized profit or loss, and settled at the end of each hour or whenever net position changes.

Hourly settlement changes trading behavior in practice. Funding costs accrue in 24 small increments daily rather than three large ones, which smooths carry costs for position holders but gives one-sided markets far more frequent opportunities to charge crowded positioning. Rates are quoted as absolute amounts per contract unit rather than bare percentages, another Kraken-specific convention worth understanding before comparing quotes across venues on the CoinPerps funding rates dashboard.

Kraken Perpetual Contract Types & Leverage

Kraken runs two perpetual families. Linear multi-collateral contracts settle in USD terms and accept BTC, ETH, and other approved assets directly as margin under a haircut schedule, sparing holders a conversion into stablecoins. Single-collateral inverse contracts margin and settle in the underlying crypto itself, a structure explained in our guide to inverse perpetual contracts. Fixed-maturity futures sit alongside the perps, and the differences are unpacked in our perpetuals vs futures comparison.

Maximum leverage is 50x, the lowest cap among major venues and a deliberate risk posture rather than a technical limit. At 50x a position survives adverse moves that would erase a 100x or 500x book, and forced liquidations execute at index price to limit slippage cascades. Kraken's share of market-wide liquidations runs correspondingly small on our liquidations tracker.

Kraken TradFi & Equity Perpetuals

Kraken launched the world's first regulated tokenized-equity perpetual futures in February this year, built on the xStocks framework it brought in-house through the Backed Finance acquisition. The initial listings track the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indices, gold, and major stocks including Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, and Strategy, at up to 20x leverage for eligible clients in 110+ countries.

The regulated-benchmark approach separates Kraken's offering from rivals tracking synthetic price feeds, since each contract references fully collateralized xStocks tokens that trade on-chain around the clock. That gives the perps continuous price discovery through weekends and holidays when traditional equity markets sit closed. US clients are excluded from these contracts, and forex perpetuals round out the traditional-asset lineup on the global platform. How Kraken's equity perps stack against Binance, Gate, and MEXC is covered in our best TradFi perpetual exchanges guide.

Kraken Licenses & Regulation

Kraken holds the broadest regulatory footprint of any perpetuals venue, documented on its own regulation page. In Europe it carries two MiCA CASP authorizations through the Central Bank of Ireland, passported across all 30 EEA countries, plus a MiFID investment firm license through Cyprus's CySEC covering regulated derivatives and an EMI license for payments. In the US it operates the only full CFTC stack held by a crypto-native firm, spanning a Designated Contract Market, Derivatives Clearing Organization, and Futures Commission Merchant through Bitnomial, alongside a second FCM through NinjaTrader Clearing operating as Kraken Derivatives US, an SEC broker-dealer registration, a Wyoming bank charter, and a Federal Reserve master account.

Its enforcement history has resolved in its favor. The SEC's November 2023 lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in March 2025 with no fine or admission of wrongdoing, following an earlier $30 million settlement in 2023 over its US staking program, which has since relaunched in permitted states. The jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction picture is maintained in our Kraken restricted countries list.

Where is Kraken Available?

Kraken serves users in 190 countries, but perpetuals access splits sharply by region. The global futures platform is not available to retail clients in the United States, Canada, or New Zealand. US traders instead access perpetual futures through Kraken Derivatives US, the CFTC-regulated and NFA-member venue, making Kraken one of the only exchanges with a compliant American perps product rather than a blocked market.

In Europe, MiCA authorization keeps the full platform open across the EEA with no product wind-downs while unlicensed rivals exit, and derivatives run under MiFID permissions. The UK operates under FCA registration with its standard retail derivatives limits. European traders comparing licensed venues can weigh the options in our guide to the best crypto futures platforms in Europe.

Is Kraken Safe?

Kraken has never suffered a major exchange-level breach in its history, a claim few venues of comparable age can make. The majority of assets sit in cold storage across facilities with armed surveillance, accounts support FIDO2 two-factor authentication including passkeys, and an internal Security Labs team continuously attacks the exchange's own systems.

Custody claims are independently checkable through Proof of Reserves audits that let clients verify their balances are included in attested holdings via Merkle proofs. Institutional custody runs through a Wyoming-chartered, fully reserved bank, and the platform holds ISO 27001 certification alongside a SOC 2 examination. Kraken publishes no custody insurance figure, a gap worth noting for large balances, and counterparty risk never reaches zero on any centralized venue regardless of how well the record reads.

How Does Kraken Compare to Other Perpetual Exchanges?

Kraken trades depth of regulation against depth of leverage. Offshore venues like Bybit and MEXC offer 100x to 500x where Kraken caps at 50x, and their altcoin perp catalogs run far wider than Kraken's roughly 100 pairs. In exchange, Kraken offers what none of them can, regulated US perpetuals access, MiCA-covered EU derivatives, and hourly funding granularity.

Its most direct comparison in the US-regulated lane is Kalshi, whose CFTC-regulated contracts are reviewed in our Kalshi perpetuals review, while the broader field is ranked side by side on our exchange comparison hub. Positioning across every venue updates in real time on the long/short ratio dashboard.