Kraken has purchased derivatives platform Small Exchange from IG Group for $100 million, laying the groundwork for the crypto firm to launch a fully U.S.-based derivatives product suite, the exchange announced Thursday.
Acquiring Small Exchange, licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a designated contract market, will allow Kraken to design and create markets for exchange-listed derivatives stateside, the company said.
“This step connects spot, futures and margin products inside a single regulated liquidity system, reducing fragmentation, lowering funding latency and bringing onshore the kind of access and performance that has mostly existed offshore,” Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said in a prepared statement. “Under CFTC oversight, Kraken can now integrate clearing, risk and matching into one environment that meets the same standards as the largest exchanges in the world.”
Kraken now operates regulated derivatives businesses in the U.K., E.U. and U.S., spanning six fiat currencies and more than 450 digital and traditional assets.
“Together, these elements create a network that moves collateral in real time, nets exposure across jurisdictions, and reduces capital inefficiencies that have long held back U.S. traders,” Sethi said. “This is not about marketing or narrative. It is about building better market structure.”
This is Kraken’s fourth acquisition in 2025. The exchange bought multi-asset investment platform Breakout in September and no-code trading platform Capitalise.ai in August – disclosing financial terms for neither transaction – and it bought futures and foreign exchange trading platform NinjaTrader in March for $1.5 billion.
The NinjaTrader deal remains one of the largest deals to date between traditional finance and the crypto sector.
M&A green light
The federal government’s regulatory about-face on crypto – since the onset of President Donald Trump’s second term, compared to the Biden era – has inspired and allowed for growth in the sector, according to Robert Moore, Kraken’s vice president of business expansion.
“A clear and positive regulatory environment in the U.S. gives companies the confidence to invest and grow with more certainty — and that includes M&A,” Moore said in an email to Banking Dive. “At Kraken, we’re being thoughtful and strategic about every deal we pursue, making sure it fits our vision for how financial infrastructure should evolve in the years ahead.”
Kraken’s peers have also been active dealmakers this year. Coinbase said it would pay $2.9 billion to buy options exchange Deribit in May, and also announced deals with token management platform LiquiFi and on-chain ad platform Spindl. Ripple said it would buy prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion in April, Canadian stablecoin platform Rail for $200 million in August and corporate treasury manager GTreasury for $1 billion Thursday.
Robinhood, for its part, said it would buy Canadian crypto firm WonderFi for $179 million in May.
Moore said he expects “a lot more” deals in the next six to nine months as companies “look to capitalize on favorable conditions while the window is open.”
