Kraken holds roughly 7 million funded accounts worldwide, according to co-CEO Arjun Sethi, who also says the company is only getting started.

The claim reflects a broader shift in how the exchange positions itself. Kraken no longer markets itself as just a place to buy Bitcoin; it is building toward something closer to a full-service financial company.

The numbers behind the milestone

A funded account is one that actually holds money, not simply an email address and a forgotten password, which makes it a tougher metric than raw signups. Sethi put the current figure at about 7 million globally. Other disclosures tied to Sethi placed the count at approximately 6.6 million as of September 2026, while at the end of 2025 the number stood at 5.7 million. Research also points to 42% year-over-year growth measured from mid-2025. Read together, the disclosures trace a steady climb rather than a one-off jump, which is the backdrop for Sethi's "only getting started" framing.

Customer assets tell a similar story. Kraken holds somewhere between $40 billion and $50 billion, a figure that came in at $48.2 billion at the end of 2025. The exchange operates in more than 190 countries and territories.

Payward's 2025 results

Payward, Kraken's parent company, posted $2.2 billion in adjusted revenue for 2025, a 33% increase from the year before. Total transaction volume across the platform reached $2.0 trillion in 2025, up 34% year over year. Those results cover the same stretch in which the funded-account count climbed from 5.7 million toward 7 million.

From exchange to financial infrastructure

Sethi has described Kraken as being early in a broader transformation. The plan is to move from a traditional crypto exchange toward a comprehensive financial infrastructure platform under Payward, housing trading, banking, asset management and institutional services.

Acquisitions are driving the expansion. Payward spent $1.5 billion on NinjaTrader, giving Kraken a foothold among traders who may never have touched crypto, and paid $550 million for Bitnomial, which fits the derivatives side of the strategy. Each deal also widens the pool of prospective funded accounts, the same metric anchoring the growth story above.

The product list is growing alongside the deal list. Kraken is rolling out or building cards, lending, derivatives and tokenized equities. Tokenized equities are digital tokens that represent shares of traditional stocks, allowing them to trade on crypto rails. The pitch ties everything together through a single balance sheet and a single regulatory framework, where a customer could theoretically trade, borrow, spend and invest without bouncing between multiple apps and compliance departments.

Why the 7 million figure matters

The NinjaTrader deal brings in traders from traditional markets who could eventually be nudged toward crypto products, while existing crypto-native customers become a potential market for traditional financial products. The roughly 7 million funded accounts are the base both directions depend on.

Integrating large acquisitions is notoriously messy, however. Merging different technology stacks, customer cultures and regulatory obligations rarely goes as smoothly as the press release implies. Operating across more than 190 countries and territories also means answering to a long list of regulators with very different views on crypto, lending and tokenized securities. How quickly NinjaTrader and Bitnomial fold into the platform, and how those regulators treat cards, lending and tokenized equities, are the immediate things to watch as the strategy moves from press release to practice.

Kraken's edge, if it has one, is scale combined with a long operating history in crypto. Roughly $48.2 billion in assets at the end of 2025 and $2.0 trillion in annual volume give it real weight in those conversations.