Kraken targets ultra-wealthy clients with new features, 24/7 priority support VIP tier

Kraken has launched an exclusive service for its “ultra wealthy clients,” as the US-based crypto exchange prepares for a public listing sometime in 2026. 

The new program unveiled this week is curated for Kraken’s ultra-high net worth individuals, active traders and institutional capital allocators who want bespoke support and direct access to senior experts inside the firm.

Large centralized exchanges have been racing to attract private clients and family offices with the “premium treatment” once reserved for traditional wealth managers. Rival exchange Binance also recently created its own “prestige” tier for users with a net worth of at least $10 million.

Kraken builds VIP program with ‘high touch services’

According to a blog post published by Kraken on Thursday, the VIP tier features support and “extraordinary experiences,” where a member is matched with a specialist relationship manager as their primary point of contact. 

The managers are backed by 24/7 support teams and multichannel access to staff within Kraken’s product groups. VIPs also receive early visibility into new features on its product ecosystem, access that extends to in-house specialists in liquidity, custody, engineering and infrastructure. 

In a statement announcing the program, Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said Kraken made the tier to meet the expectations of clients with financial scale. Membership in the tier requires either a $10 million average balance on the platform or annual trading volume of $80 million.

“Ultra high-net-worth clients don’t come to us for speed alone; they also come to us because they expect a partner who matches their ambition and understands what true scale looks like. Kraken VIP was built for them. It has unprecedented access, influence, and an improved experience that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the digital asset ecosystem,” he told reporters in the briefing.

VIP members will be invited to “extraordinary experiences,” including Formula 1 events, football matches, cultural gatherings and small meet-ups not open to the public. The company reiterated that the engagements will help deepen relationships between clients and senior figures in the industry.

Kraken expands services into tokenized assets

The VIP program launch is on the backdrop of another major announcement from the San Francisco-based exchange made this week. Cryptopolitan had reported on Tuesday that Kraken is acquiring Backed Finance, a tokenization platform that issues digital representations of real-world assets, including stocks and exchange-traded fund shares. 

Kraken has already listed several tokens created by Backed, and according to executives from both sides, the acquisition enables the exchange to integrate those products more tightly into its system. 

Sethi, who discussed the deal in a recent interview, said Kraken intends to treat tokenized equities better than the short-lived trend synonymous with crypto assets. 

“While everyone is talking about tokenized equities, we are just doing it,” he said. “We are focused on long-term investment, not hype.”

Public listing in sight, but CEO Sethi says ‘no hurry’

Kraken has been preparing for an initial public offering after quietly filing for an IPO with the SEC and closing a funding round, taking its valuation to $20 billion. The exchange, formally known as Payward Ventures, is one of the industry’s oldest operators, having debuted in 2011. 

It has been operating on a lean capital structure, taking in just $27 million in external primary funding from its inception through the end of last year. However, that approach was flipped earlier this year when Kraken raised $500 million from investors Apollo Global Management, Oppenheimer and Jane Street. 

Financial news publication Fortune reported that the round valued the firm at $15 billion before subsequent developments pushed its valuation higher.

Speaking at Yahoo Finance’s Invest event in mid-November, Sethi insisted Kraken is not in a rush to go public, even though competitor Coinbase is now publicly traded.

“We have enough capital on our balance sheet today as a private company, and we don’t want to race to the door as quickly as possible. What’s good about these companies coming out first is that they are educating the market on what’s good and what’s bad, what margin looks like, how do you make money,” he asserted.

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