Kraken CEO Dave Ripley on the state of crypto, battles with SEC and crypto regulation

Good to be here.

Yeah. Not surprised to hear that question. The crypto market is obviously doing incredibly well. Contrast that to just last year, about around this time. You know, Bitcoin — netting of sentiment, low price. Now at all-time highs and been here for a while. So as you might imagine, Kraken is seeing great success throughout this year as well.

Yeah. Actually our oral arguments for the motion to dismiss is today. The motion to dismiss is basically our argument this shouldn't even go to trial. If we look at what's happening here and contrast —

They're contending that some of the digital assets, cryptocurrencies, actually qualify as securities and, therefore, they're traded on —

Well, yeah. Which, of course, not actually a path to register. Look at, you know, we sell market across the world — Canada, UK, and U.S. prime markets. Pretty much gone to a place they put in a reasonable set of regulations. Contrast to here in the U.S., basically rogue regulators pursuing a path of regulation by enforcement. Meanwhile, we have Congress actually trying to pass bills to put something in place that's meaningful and appropriate for this.

Right now there's a bill that actually just passed the House with solid bipartisan support. 279 votes, I believe. The FIT 21 bill that actually puts forth a structure where the CFTC and S.E.C. were to regulate, depending on the digital assets. For the most part many of the digital assets would actually come under the purview of the CFTC.

Well, it's kind of all of the above. I mean, when we came into this year the executive branch, as you noted, via SEC, primarily, strongly negative to cryptocurrency. Many supporters throughout the U.S. government. I mean, I visit D.C. periodically and met with many people in Congress, the Senate, and there are a number of supporters there. And I think over the past several, I don't know, maybe two months or so, we've seen kind of strong support and now bipartisan support as well. I mean, the bill I just mentioned is one great example. We didn't expect it to be that successful — 279 votes. It was really successful. I think it was 71 from the Democrat side as well. So now, we've kind of seen a little bit of softening up on the executive branch. Biden administration said that they're willing to discuss and work with the industry, work with Congress to put forth a new bill. And so we're just seeing a lot of positive movement.

I don't think so. I don't think so. But it's baffling what the reason could be.

It doesn't help a government to not be able to use —

Right now, if we talk about stablecoins, the U.S. dollar stablecoin with huge adoption there, over $100 billion of adoption, that's something that actually kind of promotes the usage of the dollar, not just here in the U.S. but globally. And many stablecoins also coming into the regulatory fold, regulatory compliant, as is Kraken, following the regulations that are in place for money laundering and so forth. I don't think that's the answer, but it is baffling, because you ask the question, what could it be? And it's a mystery.

Well, yeah, everyone goes on a journey with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. I did myself, and his comments on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are recent, so I would hope that he's kind of on that learning journey, learning more about it. When individuals actually take the time to learn about Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, it's almost always a positive outcome.

So, 2025 was your question?

This year? Okay, we got to go quicker.

The regulation, I think we're absolutely on our way with the passage of this bill in the House and potentially we get there this year with the passage —

As far as Kraken, fund raise, IPO, all these things are on...