Kraken parent Payward acquired Hong Kong stablecoin firm Reap for $600M on May 7, then filed for a federal OCC trust charter on May 8. That's $2.65 billion in acquisitions and a banking license application in a single year. Here's the empire they're building.
Kraken's parent Payward just sued its former custodian Etana for misappropriating $25 million in client funds in what it calls a 'Ponzi-like' scheme. Etana allegedly stalled withdrawals with fake reconciliation issues while plugging holes with new deposits.
Payward's acquisition of Bitnomial hands Kraken a decade-long regulatory moat: the only full-stack CFTC-licensed crypto derivatives platform in America. No one else has all three licenses.