Kraken Rolls Out VIP Tier with 24/7 Priority Support to Court the Ultra-Wealthy
Kraken isn't just playing the crypto game anymore—it's building a velvet-roped VIP lounge within it. The exchange is making a calculated power move, launching a premium service tier designed explicitly for the ultra-high-net-worth crowd. Forget waiting in line with the retail masses; this is about dedicated, round-the-clock concierge service for those who move markets with a single trade.
The New Gold Standard
This isn't just about faster ticket resolution. Kraken's new offering bundles exclusive features and white-glove support into a single package, creating a walled garden for its most valuable clients. The message is clear: if your portfolio has enough zeros, you get to bypass the friction that defines everyday crypto. It's a direct play for the capital that traditional private banks and family offices have been nervously guarding.
A Strategic Pivot Upmarket
The launch signals a sharp strategic turn. While other platforms battle for retail sign-ups with meme coin promotions, Kraken is targeting the deep, stable capital pools held by institutional and accredited investors. It’s a bid to become the de facto crypto prime broker—the behind-the-scenes powerhouse that facilitates the big deals. They're betting that catering to the 1% of crypto users will secure a dominant share of the assets.
The service essentially functions as a financial panic room, offering immediate access to human experts regardless of market chaos or time zone. For clients used to having a dedicated banker on speed dial, Kraken is now providing its crypto equivalent.
Of course, in the world of high finance, exclusive access usually comes with a price tag that would make a hedge fund manager blush—proving once again that in markets, some animals are just more equal than others.
Kraken builds VIP program with ‘high touch services’
According to a blog post published by Kraken on Thursday, the VIP tier features support and “extraordinary experiences,” where a member is matched with a specialist relationship manager as their primary point of contact.
The managers are backed by 24/7 support teams and multichannel access to staff within Kraken’s product groups. VIPs also receive early visibility into new features on its product ecosystem, access that extends to in-house specialists in liquidity, custody, engineering and infrastructure.
In a statement announcing the program, Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said Kraken made the tier to meet the expectations of clients with financial scale. Membership in the tier requires either a $10 million average balance on the platform or annual trading volume of $80 million.
“Ultra high-net-worth clients don’t come to us for speed alone; they also come to us because they expect a partner who matches their ambition and understands what true scale looks like. Kraken VIP was built for them. It has unprecedented access, influence, and an improved experience that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the digital asset ecosystem,” he told reporters in the briefing.
VIP members will be invited to “extraordinary experiences,” including Formula 1 events, football matches, cultural gatherings and small meet-ups not open to the public. The company reiterated that the engagements will help deepen relationships between clients and senior figures in the industry.
Kraken expands services into tokenized assets
The VIP program launch is on the backdrop of another major announcement from the San Francisco-based exchange made this week. Cryptopolitan had reported on Tuesday that Kraken is acquiring Backed Finance, a tokenization platform that issues digital representations of real-world assets, including stocks and exchange-traded fund shares.
Kraken has already listed several tokens created by Backed, and according to executives from both sides, the acquisition enables the exchange to integrate those products more tightly into its system.
Sethi, who discussed the deal in a recent interview, said Kraken intends to treat tokenized equities better than the short-lived trend synonymous with crypto assets.
“While everyone is talking about tokenized equities, we are just doing it,” he said. “We are focused on long-term investment, not hype.”
Public listing in sight, but CEO Sethi says ‘no hurry’
Kraken has been preparing for an initial public offering after quietly filing for an IPO with the SEC and closing a funding round, taking its valuation to $20 billion. The exchange, formally known as Payward Ventures, is one of the industry’s oldest operators, having debuted in 2011.
It has been operating on a lean capital structure, taking in just $27 million in external primary funding from its inception through the end of last year. However, that approach was flipped earlier this year when Kraken raised $500 million from investors Apollo Global Management, Oppenheimer and Jane Street.
Financial news publication Fortune reported that the round valued the firm at $15 billion before subsequent developments pushed its valuation higher.
Speaking at Yahoo Finance’s Invest event in mid-November, Sethi insisted Kraken is not in a rush to go public, even though competitor Coinbase is now publicly traded.
“We have enough capital on our balance sheet today as a private company, and we don’t want to race to the door as quickly as possible. What’s good about these companies coming out first is that they are educating the market on what’s good and what’s bad, what margin looks like, how do you make money,” he asserted.
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