Hey, it’s Marc,

Deutsche Börse, the third-largest stock exchange in Europe, just acquired a backdoor into the U.S. Federal Reserve.

On April 14, the operator of Frankfurt exchange, Deutsche Börse AG, dropped $200M for a 1.5% stake in Kraken, exactly six weeks after Kraken quietly became the first crypto firm in history to receive a Federal Reserve master account. This is also the first direct equity position in a crypto-native exchange. [RELEASE]

The Signal: Kraken is going public with an integrated crypto stack: Spot crypto, custody and others (Kraken) + regulated FX (360T) + listed derivatives (Eurex) + tokenized securities custody (Clearstream) + tokenised stocks (xStocks) + global money app (Krak) + wallet (Kraken Wallet). No US exchange has this vertical depth on European infrastructure.

👉PRO: Download the PDF below

🚨 The PRO terminal is launching soon. This means: real time intelligence on digital assets news flow, 2000+ digital asset vendors tracked with deep product data and our proprietary vendor ratings (like Gartner, but 10x better), 10+ sector maps, intelligent signal feed and a co-pilot that’s trained on all our data. 👉 Secure your spot on the waitlist & secure access to our beta.

What happened

On April 14, 2026, Deutsche Börse announced it acquired a 1.5% fully diluted stake in Kraken (Payward Inc.), for $200M in a secondary share transaction. The deal implies a $13.3B valuation, down from the $20B Kraken printed in its November 2025 $800M raise. It closes before June.