Kraken Partners with Alpaca to Offer U.S. Stocks and Crypto

Kraken, a major cryptocurrency exchange, has teamed up with Alpaca, a company that helps with stock trading services, to let users trade U.S. stocks and ETFs along with crypto and regular money. This makes Kraken, ranked 13th among the biggest exchanges by trading volume, one of the few places where people can mix digital money with old-school financial options.

This month, people in certain U.S. states like New Jersey, Connecticut, and Washington D.C. can start trading more than 11,000 stocks and ETFs without paying extra fees on Kraken‘s site. This is the first step in Kraken’s plan to grow across the U.S., and soon they want to offer this in other countries like the UK, EU, and Australia.

Alpaca is known for its easy-to-use stock trading tools that let people buy small pieces of stocks or trade based on dollar amounts, all without fees. By working together, Kraken hopes to bring stocks and crypto into one simple platform, using blockchain tech to connect everything.

Nick LaMaina, a top leader at Kraken, said this partnership speeds up their dream of making a smooth trading space for both crypto and regular assets. With this update, Kraken is now a rival to apps like Robinhood, giving users more choices for their money.

Krakens step into stock trading fits a bigger trend of turning real-world items into digital tokens and running markets that never close as crypto does. People want platforms that mix the freedom of crypto with the safety of traditional trading, and Kraken is answering that call.

On top of this, Kraken is getting ready to possibly go public next year and is planning to borrow between $200 million and $1 billion. This money will help them grow, especially since they just spent $1.5 billion to buy NinjaTrader, a company that handles futures trading.

As crypto and traditional money keep blending together, Krakens latest actions show they want to lead the way in the world of digital finance.