On July 31, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced that it had acquired Interchange – an enterprise cryptoasset management service provider.
Interchange offers accounting and portfolio reconciliation services for institutional cryptocurrency investors, currently servicing more than 60 different institutions including hedge funds and fund administrator.
Dan Held and Clark Moody Join Kraken
The acquisition will see Interchange’s co-founders Dan Held, the former director of product at Blockchain wallet and co-founder of ZeroBlock, and Clark Moody, the founder of RTBTC, join the exchange.
With the acquisition, Kraken purports to now comprise “the world’s first end-to-end crypto trading and reconciliation platform,” with a press release stating that the addition of Interchange will enable it, in conjunction with Kraken’s charting and portfolio-tracking platform, Cryptowatch, the ability to offer “an end-to-end solution to manage and optimize their portfolios.”
Jesse Powell, the chief executive officer of Kraken, stated that the partnership will make “accounting, trade reconciliation and reporting” much easier for both “institutions and individuals” trading on Kraken.
Dan Held, the co-founder of Interchange, asserted that the acquisition will enable the business to improve its core portfolio reconciliation product, while providing Interchange customers with “easy access” to Kraken’s products.
The acquisition of Interchange is the most recent of several high-profile acquisitions made by the company this year.
Interchange founders Dan Held and Clark Moody on Kraken Acquisition: https://t.co/R6hkSY4nM4
— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) July 31, 2019
In February, Kraken acquired start-up Crypto Facilities, a regulated virtual currency futures trading platform. Despite the deal being made for an undisclosed amount, reports indicated that the parties agreed upon a“nine-figure” sum. The platform has since been rebranded to Kraken Futures, enabling Kraken users to speculate on the future price of cryptoassets.
The Crypto Facilities merger saw Kraken absorb 25 employees, bringing the number of developers hired by the company to over 100. In the month following the acquisition of Crypto Facilities, the platform reported a 500% increase in trade volume. As of this writing, the 15 contracts on Kraken Futures produced a 24-hour trade volume of almost $61 million, with XBT/USD comprising 77% of trade activity.
Earlier this month, Kraken also acquired Cryptofinance.ai, a software providing price and market data for more than 50 cryptocurrency exchanges.
