Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Kraken has acquired Breakout for an undisclosed amount, shortly after completing the acquisition of NinjaTrader.
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The acquisition will enable the crypto exchange to enter the proprietary trading ecosystem.
Kraken Acquires Breakout
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has completed the acquisition of Breakout, a Tampa, Florida startup that backs traders with capital. This latest acquisition now allows Kraken to enter the proprietary trading market.
In a statement on this acquisition, Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Kraken, said,
“Breakout gives us a way to allocate capital based on proof of skill rather than access to capital itself. In a world that is rapidly shifting from who you know to what you know, we want to build systems that reward demonstrated performance, not pedigree. That is deeply embedded in Kraken’s cultural DNA. Breakout’s evaluation first model is designed to verify risk discipline, strategy consistency, and real market decision making under pressure. This is not simulation for simulation’s sake. It is a filter for scalable signal.”
Proprietary trading allows traders to use a company’s capital rather than their own, with profits shared between the two. The company stated that traders on Breakout’s platform can keep up to 90% of their profits.
Breakout has been around since 2023 and currently supports more than 50 crypto trading pairs, including leveraged contracts on Bitcoin and Ether.
Kraken did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition. However, the acquisition comes after Breakout raised $4.5 million in seed funding in 2024.
The acquisition also comes after Kraken completed the acquisition of NinjaTrader, a US-based futures and trading software platform, earlier this year, in a deal worth $1.5 billion.
Prop trading is very popular in the forex trading sector, but has started to take root in the crypto trading market. Firms like Jump Crypto, a division of Jump Trading, and DRW’s Cumberland have already started making progress in this regard. Other retail-focused prop trading platforms like Crypto Fund Trader, HyroTrader, and Breakout offer traders evaluation-based accounts to enable them to gain access to trading capital.
