Crypto Exchange Kraken Has ‘No Plans To Register’ With SEC

The incoming chief executive of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has said the company has no plans to register with US regulators as a market intermediary, in spite of offering tokens that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has labelled as securities.

Dave Ripley, who is currently Kraken’s chief operating officer, told Reuters Kraken also doesn’t plan to delist the tokens the SEC said it considers securities.

Kraken said last week that controversial co-founder Jesse Powell would step down as chief executive to be replaced by Ripley once someone was found to fill the chief operating officer role.

Crypto controls

Ripley’s comments indicated the company plans to continue its libertarian line.

In spite of reports indicating that the SEC is scrutinising exchange Coinbase for listing tokens that the SEC identified as securities in a July insider trading lawsuit, Ripley said Kraken had no plans to remove those tokens from its exchange.

He said Kraken has no reason to register with the SEC as an exchange because the company does not offer securities.

“There are not any tokens out there that are securities that we’re interested in listing,” Ripley told Reuters.

Downturn

He added that Kraken has mostly avoided this year’s crypto market downturn and is now considering acquisition opportunities that could benefit its product and tech portfolio.

Ripley’s comments come as Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, confirmed it has hired former Kraken executive Steven Christie as Binance’s senior vice president of compliance as the company faces an increasingly aggressive regulatory environment.

Governments, central banks and agencies such as the SEC have been looking for ways of placing controls on the crypto industry, which remains largely unregulated.

JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon last week told a Congressional committee working on crypto regulation that he considered crypto tokens to be nothing more than “decentralised Ponzi schemes” and cited their links to money laundering and other criminal enterprises.