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Kraken Buys Prop-Trading Startup Breakout in Push Into Trading Infrastructure

Kraken

What Happened With Kraken’s Latest Deal?

Kraken has moved into proprietary trading with the acquisition of Breakout, a Tampa-based beginup that funds traders with capital under strict evaluation models. Announced Thursday, the deal allows Kraken to integrate Breakout’s platform into Kraken Pro, broadening the platform’s trading infrastructure. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Breakout, launched in 2023, offers up to $200,000 in trading capital to participants who pass tests designed to evaluate risk management and discipline. Traders can retain as much as 90% of their profits. The platform supports more than 50 crypto trading pairs, including leveraged BTC and Ether contracts.

“Breakout gives us a way to allocate capital based on proof of skill rather than access to capital itself,” said Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi. “We want to build systems that reward demonstrated performance, not pedigree.”

Investor Takeaway

Kraken’s expansion into prop trading opens a new revenue stream and positions the platform to compete with established crypto market makers and evaluation-based retail prop firms.

Why Prop Trading Matters in Crypto

Proprietary trading, or “prop trading,” refers to traders deploying a firm’s capital rather than their own, with profits shared between both sides. later than the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. banks were barred from proprietary trading, shifting the activity to independent firms such as Citadel Securities, Jane Street, and Jump Trading. In crypto, prop trading has emerged as a niche but growing area, with firms like Jump Crypto and Cumberland deploying capital to provide liquidity and profit from digital assets.

Breakout belongs to a wave of retail-oriented prop firms—alongside Crypto Fund Trader and HyroTrader—that offer traders access to evaluation-based accounts. By bringing Breakout into its ecosystem, Kraken aims to combine this retail prop model with the scale and compliance of a global platform.

How This Fits Into Kraken’s Strategy

The acquisition follows Kraken’s $1.5 billion purchase of NinjaTrader in May 2025, a major U.S. futures and trading software provider. Together, the deals underscore Kraken’s push to build out trading infrastructure that appeals to both professional and retail clients. Integrating Breakout into Kraken Pro could give the platform an edge by offering capital access, evaluation systems, and advanced trading tools in one platform.

This aligns with broader industry trends: platforms are increasingly adding TradFi-style services to capture institutional and retail flow. Coinbase’s $2.9 billion acquisition of Deribit, Crypto.com’s regulatory expansion in Europe, and Coincheck’s planned acquisition of Aplo in Paris all point to platforms diversifying beyond spot markets into derivatives, brokerage, and now prop trading.

Investor Takeaway

Kraken’s integration of Breakout will test whether platforms can successfully merge retail-focused prop trading with institutional-grade infrastructure to attract a broader base of traders.

What’s Next for Kraken?

For Kraken, the immediate focus will be integrating Breakout into Kraken Pro and leveraging its evaluation-based model to attract skilled traders. Analysts will be watching whether the platform uses the platform primarily as a retail funnel or extends it into a professional market-making arm.

More broadly, the move reinforces the competitive race among platforms to blend crypto-native platforms with traditional finance features. By stepping into prop trading, Kraken signals it wants to play a largeger role in providing both liquidity and trader development—key ingredients as digital assets become increasingly integrated into mainstream financial markets.

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