Kraken hit with $1.25 million penalty for unlawful futures trading

Here we go again. Kraken has been slapped with a $1.25 million fine for engaging in illegal futures trading, according to the CFTC.

It was also in press: [2021-09-28] CFTC Imposes A $1.25 Million Penalty against Kraken exchange I'm not impressed, $1.25M is not such a huge fine for the money involved there. And if they're not guilty, I'm sure that they'll start a lawsuit to get their money back. It's sad though, I had better expectations from CFTC in the way to do their job...

I don't think a lawsuit will help Kraken in any way here! CFTC has imposed this fine because Kraken started offering futures products without registering themselves under the appropriate legal classification. So no matter what Kraken does, it seems highly impossible for them to win over CFTC as they have a quite valid ground. If they go to court, most likely court will reject their plea and the lawsuit might not take off the ground.

Well, then, sorry, but they deserve it, don't they? The problem is not when they do wrong and they get fined (again, $1.25M sounds to me like a warning, not something to hurt them badly). The problem is that in many cases there's lack of clarity on what a business has to do to comply. For example (although I don't like Coinbse), see the Coinbase lending vs SEC saga I hope that I don't mix too badly apples with oranges.

Source --->  https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8433-21 It seems that this reason is not an audit on their part for money laundering or manipulation, and therefore the investigations did not begin to accurately enter the platform, but I see it as a warning sign to stop trading in futures trading. so illegal futures trading is just failed to register as a futures commission merchant. AFAIK, CFTC is not something that you would like to be under them radar, especially since they can seized your business, I think what happened to Coinbase Pro disables margin trading after CFTC check.

USD 1.25 MM definitely sound more like a warning shot than anything else. Given that unlike some other exchanges Kraken has a relatively good standing with regulators around the globe I wouldn't worry too much about it. Still rather unexpected for Kraken's legal team to drop the ball like that.

Not really that big or i could consider to be a fine for something that involves illegal futures trading and considering on how much they had potentially able to make profits with that then it would just be peanuts and 1M+ is just not right for it to be considered as a fine.They should have at least make it bigger. Nothing new for illegal or insider trades like this which could possibly happen on any platform.Some gets bust and some do still continuing to do so.

Whenever companies offer derivatives trading they have to come with the full expectation that they will get something like this occurring. Regulators are not particularly fond of levered up positions that create systemic risk in the financial sector. I think quite a lot of other exchanges are getting pressured as well, not just Kraken.

Meanwhile, in the same week Kraken's been putting out a pretty boatload of vacancies (Accounting and compliance), noticed on LinkedIn and a couple of views on me -- though it could easily have been a refreshed listing. Saw their salaries around last year, if the estimates were right, they weren't even paying benchmark on "crypto/blockchain" startups, might have changed. Maybe they ought to raise the bar now to prevent such awkward (if not costly)