Kraken

Kraken was founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell and went operational in 2013, making it one of the oldest continuously operating crypto exchanges in the world. Headquartered in San Francisco and available in more than 190 countries (though with state-level restrictions in the U.S.), Kraken has facilitated over $400 billion in cumulative trading volume and serves over 10 million customers globally. The platform is registered with FinCEN as a Money Services Business, holds state-level Money Transmitter Licenses across most of the U.S., and has never been successfully hacked — a distinction only a handful of major exchanges can claim.

The exchange is structurally divided into two interfaces: Kraken (the retail-friendly product) and Kraken Pro (the advanced trading terminal targeting professional and institutional users). On the Pro side, maker/taker fees start at 0.25%/0.40% and scale down to 0%/0.10% at high volume tiers, making it competitive with Coinbase Advanced and meaningfully cheaper than the standard Coinbase experience. The platform supports spot trading across 200+ cryptocurrencies, offers staking on 15+ assets, runs a margin trading product with leverage up to 5x, and provides futures and options through Kraken Futures (its derivatives subsidiary). Kraken also publishes Proof of Reserves reports — cryptographic attestations verifying that customer deposits are fully backed — conducted by independent auditor Armanino LLP.