The end of the year is a great time to reflect on and celebrate the key milestones and events of the past 12 months, both for crypto and for our community. In 2021, Kraken continued on its mission: to accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrency so that you and the rest of the world can achieve financial freedom and inclusion.
We celebrated our 10th anniversary, doubled our workforce to more than 2,000 people and marketed innovative products and services.
All of our work has been done and all of our accomplishments have been made in support of our mission, for the benefit of you, our customers. Below, we take a closer look at how much what we did in 2021 matters to you, and take a look at the year ahead.
Bringing crypto to the people
In June, we launched a new home page with the brand new Kraken app providing a fast, easy and convenient crypto buying experience using Apple Pay and Google Pay. We have grown our crypto market by listing 42 additional tokens, providing our clients with more ways to diversify their crypto portfolios. And, we’ve completely overhauled our how to buy bitcoins page on Kraken Learn, which makes it much easier to get started in crypto with the world’s most famous and dominant first cryptocurrency.
For clients looking to diversify their holdings towards more specific opportunities, we have launched support Peas (POINT) and Kusama (KSM) parachain auctions – becoming one of the only major crypto exchanges in the world to do so. Kraken customers can now become the first users of these rapidly growing ecosystems, support your favorite crypto projects and earn rewards while benefiting from Kraken’s world-class security, intuitive user experience and integration. transparent with our exchange. Learn more about how do parachaines work.
And that’s not the only way our customers are earning big rewards on their tokens this year. In 2021, Kraken’s staking service has grown more than nine-fold and paid over $ 500 million USD to clients staking their crypto on our platform. We have also increased our number of staking options for first nine proof-of-stake protocols including Cardano (ADA), Algorand (ALGO) and Solana (SOL).
Our efforts to fuel the global adoption of crypto extended to crypto companies as well with the launch of Kraken Ventures. This initiative provides funding and expertise to the next generation innovators in the larger crypto ecosystem, of which you, our customers, are a part. The scope of the projects we have supported covers fintech, crypto companies and protocols, and decentralized finance (DeFi), as well as technology companies developing AI, machine and deep learning, RegTech and cybersecurity.
Visit KrakenVentures.com to learn more about the exciting work of these companies or to apply for funding.
Spreading crypto culture across the world and in the metaverse
In 2021, it became very clear that crypto has spread far beyond the borders of finance.
In July Kraken turned 10 and to celebrate we sponsored Wyoming’s Cheyenne Frontier Days, one of the oldest and largest outdoor festivals and rodeos in the United States. Wyoming is the future headquarters and a key partner of the Kraken Bank. We are grateful for Wyoming’s strong support for crypto adoption and have been proud to support the local community with this sponsorship.
Commissioned mural on Kraken Bank in Cheyenne, Wyoming by local artist Jordan Dean.
Our efforts to bring crypto into culture didn’t stop at the rodeo. United by a shared belief in the power of crypto and digital assets to change the world, we asked some of the world’s best digital creators to share their vision of the future, giving them a blank canvas to do just that in a UK poster campaign.
Then at the end of 2021, we made our first big splash in the metaverse, sponsorship of the Decentraland Metaverse festival, a four-day celebration of music, culture and creativity in the virtual world of Decentraland.
Donate to support a strong crypto community
In 2021, we continued to solidify our position and reputation as one of the world’s largest and most trusted crypto exchanges – and one of the most important ways to achieve this has been to give back to the broader crypto community.
Last year, we donated $ 500,000 to honor projects and teams doing essential work that contributes to the development and expansion of crypto. This year, we increased our total commitment to $ 700,000 in donations to support blockchain developer training, teams that train regulators and defend the rights of crypto investors, and open source innovators building the next generation cryptographic infrastructure.
We made two contributions to help Ethereum network upgrades and the long-awaited migration to Ethereum 2.0. And, we are also committed to supporting the next generation of crypto professionals with donations to University of Wyoming and Black Bitcoin billionaires.
We are excited to support all donation recipients as they continue – or begin – to contribute to the tsunami of global crypto adoption. If you know someone who could benefit from one of our grants in 2022, Contact us.
Provide compelling crypto content
This year, Kraken Intelligence and Kraken Security Labs created some of our most popular content of the year, including a comprehensive twelve-page guide on how to securely store your cryptocurrency, an in-depth research report to help you understand why NFTs have so much potential, and a guide on how to protect your fingerprint from hacking. Register for our latest market research and mark our Safety laboratories ” page to stay up to date on our latest reports and white papers.
On social media, we were blown away by the love our tweets received, including the Bitcoin S2F model diagram, the Kraken Doge meme Elon Musk shared and our CEO Jesse Powell’s mega-bullish bitcoin price prediction.
2021 marked another pivotal year for our original video content aimed at educating and inspiring global crypto adoption, including our Polkadot parachain auctions simply explained.
And, in 2021, our Customer Experience team has developed an abundance of new resources to help people make the switch from fiat to crypto, including their most read articles, Generate an API key and a QR code for the Kraken Pro mobile application and our article seen internationally Where can I use Kraken?
Growing to meet global demand for crypto
This year, we doubled our global customer base and headcount to respond to a deluge of new interest in crypto. Of the 1,147 employees who joined the mighty Kraken in 2021, we’ve added three people to key leadership roles, including:
- Mike davidson, vice president of design. Mike’s contribution will help shape our brand and improve user experiences.
- Pranesh Anthapur, Human Resources Director. Pranesh will strategize and execute the scale up of our global workforce.
- Alex Chiocci, Vice President of Product Management. Alex will launch strategic enhancements to the Kraken product suite.
As the crypto industry and adoption continues to grow, Kraken plans to double our team again to reach over 5,000 people by the end of 2022. We also announced the acquisition of Stake, an infrastructure platform that enables secure, profitable, non-custodial crypto staking in one of the largest transactions in crypto history. If you are passionate about crypto, go to to our careers page to see our latest job offers.
As people around the world realize the alarming devaluation of their fiat currency savings in 2022, they will continue to flock to crypto in search of new connections, new assets, and new experiences. We will be ready to launch exciting new products and services that will help the whole world to exploit the limitless possibilities that crypto will bring. We look forward to the start of 2022.
Until then, live long and HODL. ??
Good year!
-The Kraken team