Kraken CEO Shrugs Off Bitcoin Slide as Tokenized Stocks Hit $10B in Volume

Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi remains unfazed by drop below $100,000 and stated that short-term price movements are less important than the asset’s long-term trajectory. In a recent on Yahoo Finance, Sethi shared his perspective on cryptocurrency volatility and the exchange’s strategic direction.

“Just like any other asset, the more it goes up, there’s speculation around it. When it goes down, you tend to get a little bit more negative news. But that’s across every asset class,” Sethi stated. He noted that Kraken operates across multiple jurisdictions including Australia, Canada, United States, UK, and Greater Europe and provides access to over 400 crypto-related assets plus U.S. stocks and ETFs.

Sethi pointed to Bitcoin’s historical price progression to support his outlook. “If you just look at the general slope of Bitcoin from $6,000 to $15,000 to $25,000 back to $8,000 to $50,000, back to $16,000, then $80,000, you always have these curves that have continued to change for all asset classes,” he explained.

The co-CEO emphasized that understanding the thesis behind buying Bitcoin or Ethereum matters more than reacting to daily price fluctuations. For many international users, cryptocurrencies provide access to safe assets, particularly in jurisdictions where local equity markets are limited or inaccessible.

“Bitcoin, Ethereum, the alts, Solana, etc. become sort of more synonymous with safety over time,” Sethi said. He added that the next phase includes U.S. Treasuries through stablecoins and tokenized equities, which have become a major driver for Kraken and other platforms.

Kraken’s tokenized stock product called Xstocks has become one of the platform’s fastest-growing offerings. Available worldwide except in the United States, the product provides access to traditional equities through blockchain rails. “We just passed $10 billion in transactional volume on a tokenless, permissionless platform,” Sethi revealed.

The product operates on Solana and Ethereum blockchains and is accessible through multiple wallets and decentralized exchanges. Sethi described this as avoiding a “walled garden” approach where users must remain within a single ecosystem.

Regarding U.S. regulation, Sethi addressed the recent passage of the GENIUS Act, which legitimizes one-to-one backed treasury yields into stablecoins. He anticipates the Clarity Act, which passed the House, will define how financial products can flow through exchanges into the United States.

“Once that happens, it’ll be a flood of innovation, a flood of capital, a flood of products that can come in and actually start innovating,” Sethi predicted. He emphasized that consumer protection and trust remain paramount even as regulatory frameworks evolve.