Kraken is an online exchange allowing people to buy, sell, and trade bitcoin and altcoins with others on the exchange. It provides a way for people to ride the market’s ups and downs, day trade, or hold longer-term investments as they please.
Kraken is also a privately-held company, so investing in the company itself can be tricky and involves more than just buying stock from Wall Street.
The Basics
Investing in privately-held companies is heavily regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States. There are similar agencies all over the world that regulate these investments in their jurisdictions as well.
Making these investments involves meeting several criteria. The criteria are different in every country, but the United States defines an accredited investor as someone who has a net worth of at least $1,000,000, has an income of at least $200,000 for the past two years ($300,000 combined if married), and is expected to make the same in the current year.
Getting Started
As an accredited investor, you can purchase stock in a variety of privately-held companies, but Kraken has not opened their company up to accredited investors. However, there are ways around this, even for investors who are not accredited.
There are secondary markets like SharesPost where accredited investors, company founders, and others who own stock in a company can list their shares for sale. These secondary markets allow people who normally wouldn’t have access to these shares an opportunity to purchase them.
We advise against doing it this way for several reasons. There are very high fees for purchasing stock on a secondary market, and these secondary markets are dealing with exempt securities, which aren’t as heavily regulated by the SEC.
That means these secondary markets are a little bit riskier because you don’t have as much visibility into the activities of the company, how it’s performing, or what your return on investment potential is. You’re not an investor; you’re a shareholder, and chances are, the company doesn’t even know the shares were resold on the secondary market at all.
The Best Thing To Do
The best thing you can do in a situation where you can’t yet invest in Kraken is to invest in the blockchain market as a whole. If you’re interested in owning stock and participating in its growth, you can set up an account on the Kraken exchange and start trading today.
As the altcoin market rises, Kraken’s value will increase because it provides a way for everyone to realize that value. Altcoins provide much-needed liquidity in an otherwise illiquid market, which means its inherent value is already high, but not well-understood.
Promoting a platform that enables people to break into an otherwise misunderstood market that hasn’t seen widespread adoption yet will get the word out faster and help the market realize its own potential much faster. Subscribe to the Bitcoin Market Journal newsletter to learn more about the market as it continues to develop and grow. Then, set up an account, fill your wallet with as much as you’re willing to spend, and start investing today.