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San Francisco-based cryptocurrency trading platform Kraken is chalking out a plan to relaunch its services in India, and has appointed Shiprocket cofounder Vishesh Khurana as an advisor, multiple people aware of the developments told ET. Khurana will lead Kraken’s India operations, one of the persons will soon engage with the authorities here to apply for licences to operate, sources -listed Coinbase is also reportedly aiming to relaunch in is currently managing partner of venture capital firm Tribe Capital India. Arjun Sethi, founder of Tribe Capital, is presently co-CEO at Kraken.“We can confirm we are looking to apply for authorisation, and that Vishesh (Khurana) is serving as an advisor,” a spokesperson for Kraken told ET in response to an email query.“We are looking to enter India officially, and will build a team there,” one of the people cited above was banned in India in early 2024 along with eight other crypto exchanges for failing to comply with the country’s anti-money laundering operate in India, cryptocurrency exchanges must agree to comply with the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), which includes registration with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), adherence to know-your-customer (KYC) norms and reporting suspicious September last year, ET had reported that offshore cryptocurrency exchanges may also need to clear pending goods and services tax (GST) dues to restart far, Binance and KuCoin are among offshore crypto trading platforms cleared by the FIU to restart tailwindsKraken’s plans to re-enter India follows a boom in prices of large cryptocurrencies such as the Bitcoin, which is trading near all-time high levels. On Wednesday, Bitcoin was trading at over $96,000, as per Wednesday, Kraken was the seventh largest crypto exchange in the world, according to CoinMarketCap – on the basis of 24-hour trading volume. Binance was the largest, followed by Bybit and clocked $1.5 billion in revenue during 2024, more than double of $671 million in 2023, when the markets were subdued, Sethi revealed in a blog post on January 31.“During the year, clients entrusted us with $42.8 billion in assets on the platform and 2.5 million funded accounts. Total trading volumes in 2024 reached $665 billion and our average revenue per customer is now well over $2,000 – far surpassing any comparable stat we’ve seen from traditional or crypto exchanges,” Sethi wrote.“Today, with increasing regulatory clarity and industry tailwinds – not just in the US, but globally – we’re positioning ourselves for even greater acceleration,” he as an asset have received a huge leg-up following the election of Donald Trump as the US president. Trump has expressed strong support for digital assets and had even vowed to establish the US as the “crypto capital of the planet” during his campaign, as per a Reuters report.
