Kraken rides the Trump tariff train to $471M  Q1 revenue ahead of planned IPO

According to its latest report, Kraken made $472 million in gross revenue for Q1 2025 and an adjusted EBITDA of $187 million. 

Kraken started the year with strong momentum. Despite a shifting market, it still delivered robust growth and disciplined execution, which is evident in its financial results.

Kraken made bank in the first quarter

Kraken also attracted more customers and investors in a volatile market. It recorded 26% more customers than last year, and those customers traded 29% more.

Aside from the revenue, Kraken also acquired a trading platform and futures broker known as NinjaTrader. The acquisition will allow crypto traders to soon be able to seamlessly access traditional derivatives within Kraken’s trading experience while derivatives traders will be able to access crypto markets on the NinjaTrader platform.

Kraken has also added new features to the brand, including Kraken Pay, a method for sending money or crypto anywhere, a new Kraken consumer app that makes it easy for investors to buy various asset classes, and asset staking.

The report also showcases Kraken’s accountability as it announced the completion of its latest proof of reserves for supported cryptocurrencies as of March 31, 2025.

Unlike the industry standard of relying on an auditor’s single attestation, Kraken enables clients to independently confirm that their assets are fully backed on-chain. Kraken is one of the only exchanges doing this, and it said it will continue to publish these reports every few months.

Kraken’s report matters for its future plans

Despite Trump’s tariffs, which damaged investor confidence and slowed trading as people took shelter in safe assets like gold, Kraken still outperformed the conditions, expanded its customer base, and increased revenue.

This could encourage its IPO endeavors as it presents a positive image and makes a bullish case for why investors might want to own a piece of its stock offering. The report and the achievements also attest to the company’s overall health, which could also excite people about its future prospects.

The conversation of a Kraken IPO has been making the rounds since 2022, but it looks like it could finally happen within the first three months of 2026. The exchange is reportedly monitoring the market to pick the perfect time.

The Trump administration and its pro-crypto moves might have also encouraged the decision to go public. Other crypto exchanges like Coinbase have gone the IPO route in the past, and Kraken plans to be the latest.

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