Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced today it has acquired Small Exchange, a futures exchange regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), for $100 million from IG Group. The strategic acquisition of the Designated Contract Market (DCM) license is a significant move that paves the way for Kraken to launch a fully U.S.-native derivatives product suite.
The acquisition is central to Kraken’s strategy to build a unified, high-performance trading environment, allowing it to create markets for exchange-listed derivatives in the massive U.S. capital market under CFTC oversight.
Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi described the acquisition as the “foundation for a new generation of United States derivatives markets,” emphasizing its focus on scale, transparency, and efficiency.
“This step connects spot, futures, and margin products inside a single regulated liquidity system,” Sethi stated. He noted that the integration would reduce market fragmentation, lower funding latency, and bring high-performance access—currently found mostly offshore—directly to the U.S.
The DCM authorization will allow Kraken to integrate clearing, risk, and matching into one environment that meets the standards of the world’s largest exchanges. This move solidifies Kraken’s global regulatory footprint, which now includes regulated derivatives venues in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States, covering six fiat currencies and over 450 assets.
The purchase of Small Exchange follows a series of strategic milestones in Kraken’s U.S. derivatives growth.
Earlier this year, Kraken acquired the U.S. futures platform NinjaTrader, which enabled its clients to trade CME-listed cryptocurrency futures and a broader range of contracts (equities, FX indices, and commodities) alongside spot crypto in a single interface.
The exchange has a multi-year history of investing in derivatives, including the 2019 acquisition of the UK FCA-regulated Crypto Facilities and the recent launch of a regulated crypto futures offering in Europe under the MiFID II framework.
Kraken stated that by securing the necessary licensing and infrastructure, it is “laying the groundwork for institutional-grade markets as crypto matures.” The company is positioning itself to be one of the few global crypto firms with fully regulated derivatives operations across all three major jurisdictions.
