Kraken Reveals 2,000% Surge in Crypto Whale Trading

August 21, 2019

Nelson Minier, the head of Kraken’s OTC sales and trading, says the platform is processing 20 times more trades per month than they were at the beginning of 2018.

In an interview with The Block, Minier says Kraken doesn’t disclose exact volumes, though he does note that Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Monero and Tether are probably the top five assets in terms of trading volume. He also says the OTC desk still tends to do less volume than spot volume.

Even so, Minier says that there is a correlation between the exchange and OTC.

“High volume on exchanges means high volume in OTC. Sometimes we might have different volumes because we might have a new coin that comes up. We might have some activity with different coin and then you’ll see spikes in our volume versus maybe the exchange won’t have as much.

Those anomalies. But there’s a very high correlation obviously between the exchange volume and our volume. So having a bet you think is going to bring more volume is going to bring more attention.”

Minier also dives into the necessity for OTC trading desks, and says the platform caters to crypto whales who have been trading for years as well as and wealthy individuals and institutions who are newcomers to the space.

“Pretty much you have institutions, high net worth individuals. OG’s in the space – we do particularly well with the OG’s. And they come to us because they want to trade and they want to do it efficiently. They want white-glove service.

They know they’re doing pretty big size and they want to make sure that they’re talking to somebody and feel more comfortable talking to somebody that’s going to be moving that much money and sending them a wire or receiving coins like, hey did you get my coins? Yeah I got em’ man, they’re right here. Or did you send that wire when it was supposed to get there? Can you call the bank?

Make sure the wire is going to get here because you know it’s a daunting experience sometimes to wait for money to kind of show up. When you don’t have necessarily that third party there in the middle particularly when you send in coins.”

The Kraken OTC official also says he thinks the future of the market involves trading new types of crypto-specific derivatives.

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