Kraken's Jesse Powell: Banks are the Biggest Hurdle for Bitcoin Businesses

Even though Kraken is based in the US and facilitates exchanges between a number of different cryptocurrencies, its customer base is decidedly euro-driven.

In fact, according to BitcoinAverage, Kraken has over 50% of the EUR/BTC market. That makes it the largest player in that trading pair.

Due to regulatory issues in the US (which has 50 different states with 50 different ideas about money transmission), Kraken leans on its European banking partnership with Germany-based Fidor.

Even with that geographic bent, being San Francisco-based has had benefits for Kraken, and, in March, the company closed a $5m Series A funding round from Hummingbird Ventures.

CoinDesk sat down with Kraken CEO Jesse Powell to talk about the challenges of running a cryptocurrency exchange in terms of banking, regulation and how decisions are made for adding altcoins.

While some may associate the name Kraken with spiced rum or perhaps its monstrous fictional namesake, Powell says that he had owned the domain Kraken.com for years, having designs on using the name for something. However, he didn't know exactly what it would be.

In the beginning, Kraken's parent company, Payward, was planning to provide a bitcoin wallet service, like Coinbase.

Powell's experience in 2011, though, helping out Mt. Gox with its early problems in Japan, a story that he details here, motivated him to build a robust cryptocurrency exchange.

"We’ll probably never get back to doing the Payward wallet," he said. "[We'll] probably just focus on Kraken. We’re trying to rebrand everything to just Kraken."

Do one thing and do it well has become the strategy for Kraken, said Powell:

Powell's trip to Tokyo in order to help Mt. Gox bounce back from security intrusion that severely affected bitcoin influenced Kraken's move to into the exchange business. Since the company was initially formed in 2011, though, regulatory issues have shifted. According to Powell:

Kraken's exchange platform debuted in early 2013. For many months, users could only trade with 'play' money. But the strategy helped the company work out bugs in the system early on. By the time of its official launch last September, Kraken had better knowledge about running a robust exchange:

Kraken currently makes all of its money on exchange fees, which means it is dependent on the price and volume of coins traded in order to profit.

Powell said, though, that the startup is looking at other ways to make money, adding:

Kraken's focus on European markets is based on problematic regulatory compliance issues within the US.

The exchange only does business in a handful of US states because of the different compliance requirements from state to state. "People in some states may miss out on an opportunity to get into bitcoin," if something isn't done to ease the rules, said Powell.

At this point, there haven't been any issues that have cropped up against exchanges or wallets in the United States. "There’s been no enforcement action yet, whatsoever, as far as I’m aware, against any of the exchanges," he explained.

However, that could change if states take action against an exchange or a wallet provider:

The biggest problem, however, comes in the form of banking for startups that want to get involved in bitcoin.

"Even if you are not getting enforced against by the regulators or even if you have your licences, it does not guarantee you a bank account. The banks are the biggest hurdles for these businesses," said Powell, adding.

While at the beginning of 2014 there was some promising news with Wells Fargo and Bank of America both publicly looking at bitcoin, Powell said that Mt. Gox's disintegration has dealt a serious blow to the US cryptocurrency market, with banks now causing bitcoin-related companies difficulty in obtaining accounts.

This environment shows how much banking really has control over the business climate, he explained:

It's impossible to run a business with just paper money these days, a scenario that Powell has trouble trying to envision as feasible in 2014. The idea of running a business by mailing around what he described as "100% stacks of cash" is not really possible.

Legitimate businesses have to use banks – something that, if given a choice, the feds would rather prefer over a purely cash economy:

Kraken now trades bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin, namecoin, ven and ripple's XRP. Powell says that Kraken is interested in adding peercoin at some point, as well.

It takes careful study of the cryptocurrency's volume and differentiating aspects to decide if an altcoin has long-term potential for addition to Kraken, Powell explained, adding:

Many people don't realize that adding an altcoin to the exchange takes effort. Therefore, for Kraken, new coins have to be scrutinized, according to Powell:

The problem for exchanges that support altcoins is that the bandwagon can often leave a coin (and thus users) behind rather quickly. For an exchange doing its best to follow regulatory and banking standards to the point of even providing public audits, scams are a problem.

It's something that Powell, and Kraken as a company, is ultimately concerned about for the community's sake:

Kraken logo via Bitcoinx