Kraken, a global digital currency exchange based in San Francisco, has acquired the popular charting and trading platform Cryptowatch. The acquisition is the most recent in a series of merger and acquisition deals that Kraken has leveraged to expand its global client-base, add new services and bring talented member to its team.
Kraken has already leveraged Cryptowatch to release an upgraded trading interface. Cryptowatch founder Artus Sapek will be joining the company to both continue developing Cryptowatch and lead the development of Kraken’s interface.
“In just two years, Cryptowatch grew into one of the pillars of the digital asset trading community,” Sapek said. “Teaming up with an exchange was the natural next step, and Kraken was my first choice. The Kraken team has built a very mature and reliable exchange.”
Cryptowatch is used by thousands of traders to chart over 150 markets in real-time and trade up to 22 digital currencies through a user-friendly interface. In the past two years, the platform has experienced rapid growth, increasing its active user-base by 700%.
Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken, said that the company will devote more resources and talent to further enhance Cryptowatch’s offering. “We’ve purposed the technology to provide a great new charting and trading platform to Kraken clients as the first step in improving our own interface. It’s a great start to 2017 and I can’t wait to share what else we’ve got in the pipeline,” he said.
Kraken previously acquired three major bitcoin exchanges Coinsetter, from the US, Cavirtex, Canada’s first bitcoin exchange, and Clevercoin, from the Netherlands. In December 2016, it acquired Glidera, an award-winning wallet funding service, which the company plans to rebrand to Kraken Direct.
Since 2015, the number of M&A transactions in the bitcoin space has begun to increase significantly, a sign that the industry is moving toward consolidation and maturing. These deals include for instance BitFury’s acquisition of Allied Control, a specialist in two-phase immersion thermal management platforms, in January 2015; Hong Kong exchange ANX’s acquisitions of Norway’s bitcoin exchange JustCoin and US-based CoinMKT; as well as Digital Asset Holdings’ acquisitions of Hyperledger and Bits of Proofs in mid-2015.
Founded in 2011, Kraken is a trading platform that lets users to trade 11 cryptocurrencies and four traditional currencies. It is the largest global bitcoin exchange in euro volume and liquidity.
Kraken is known in the space for being the first exchange to have its market data displayed on the Bloomberg Terminal as well as the first company to pass a cryptographically verifiable proof-of-reserves audit.
The startup is backed by key investors including SBI Investment, Money Partners Group, Hummingbird Ventures, Blockchain Capital, and Digital Currency Group, among others.