Kraken just launched 24/7 forex trading while Bitcoin was still crab around $80K – guess they needed a bit more action in the meantme.

The OG crypto exchange dropped FX perpetual futures for EUR/USD and GBP/USD pairs on its Pro platform, letting degens trade global currencies without the markets ever closing.

And that's just the appetizer in Kraken's multi-course meal of traditional finance offerings.

Never-Ending Forex Fun

These new "FX perps" work exactly like crypto perpetuals – no expiry date, just pure position-holding for as long as your collateral holds up.

It's like they copy-pasted the crypto perps model and slapped it onto forex, creating a hybrid that laughs at the "markets closed" concept.

Traders can now ape into currency pairs with up to 20x leverage, which is either exciting or terrifying depending on how rekt you've been in the past.

Kraken's even figured out how to keep pricing legitimate during those hours when traditional forex markets are sleeping like boomers.

One-Stop Degen Shop

Kraken knows what it wants out of TradFi at this point – it's diving in headfirst like a whale into a liquidity pool.

Since April, they've been rolling out commission-free trading for over 11,000 stocks and ETFs to select US clients.

That puts them in direct competition with Robinhood, suggesting some future friction that’s sure to see sparks fly. 

They're basically becoming the Swiss Army knife of trading platforms – crypto, forex, equities, and cash, all from the same account that got KYC'd back in 2017.

Debit Cards Kicking Off Soon

As if that wasn't enough, Kraken's also partnered with Mastercard to drop crypto debit cards across Europe and the UK.

These cards let hodlers actually spend their digital assets and stablecoins at more than 150 million merchants globally.

It's like they're speedrunning the crypto adoption game by making digital assets as easy to use as the fiat we all claim to hate.

This builds on their Kraken Pay service, which already has 200,000 users sending instant cross-border payments in 300 different currencies.

The Volume Speaks

Kraken's users traded a massive $5.4 billion in forex spot volume just last year, with $3.5 billion coming from the EUR/USD and GBP/USD pairs alone.

Those are some serious numbers for an exchange that was purely crypto not that long ago.

The demand is obviously there, and Kraken's just giving the people what they want – more markets to trade while normal people are sleeping.

FX perps are basically designed for that trader who's always complaining about markets closing just when things get interesting.

The Financial Play At Hand

The walls between crypto and traditional finance are coming down as the two become harder to distinguish from one another.

Kraken is striving to fundamentally redefine what a financial platform can be in the age of crypto.

Co-CEO Arjun Sethi is out here talking about trading being "borderless, always on, and built on crypto rails" – which is basically the Web3 version of "move fast and break things."

As they gear up for a potential IPO, Kraken's positioning itself as the platform where the normies and the crypto natives can finally coexist.

Winning Or Diluting?

Kraken's multi-asset approach is either brilliant diversification or dangerous dilution of what made crypto special.

The purists are probably screaming about selling out to TradFi, while the pragmatists are just happy to manage all their assets in one place.

For retail traders stuck between worlds, having a unified platform means fewer apps, fewer passwords, and fewer headaches.

Unleash The Kraken

The crypto exchange wars just entered a new phase – it's no longer about who has the most tokens, but who can integrate the most financial ecosystems.

Kraken clearly believes the future isn't just crypto or just traditional finance – it's both, seamlessly blended.

The question is whether they can maintain their crypto street cred while courting the suit-and-tie crowd that still thinks Bitcoin is mainly for criminals.