Kraken Parent Payward Posts $60M Q3 EBITDA, Down 67% Year on Year

Adjusted EBITDA Slides to $60 Million

Payward, the Wyoming-based parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, posted $60 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the third quarter, a 67% drop from roughly $182 million in the same period a year earlier, per the shareholder letter the company released on Friday. The shortfall traces to a deep slowdown in trading. Total platform transaction volume fell 30% year on year to $353 billion, and subdued activity weighed directly on the fees Kraken collects from spot trading and related flows. Payward's preferred revenue measure, total platform margin, declined 12% year on year to $487 million. That metric, introduced this quarter in place of adjusted revenue, deducts staking rewards paid to clients along with trading costs.

Customer growth moved in the opposite direction. Funded accounts, defined as customers holding a balance above zero, climbed 37% year on year to 7.1 million. The quarter also improved against the second: adjusted EBITDA rose 163% quarter over quarter, and total platform margin gained 12% as trading activity picked up late in the period, even though adjusted earnings remain well below year-earlier levels. The pressure is industry wide. Coinbase reported a 35% annual revenue decline for its third quarter while returning to profitability, and Gemini Space Station recorded a 19% revenue drop alongside a 73% slump in volumes, though it narrowed its losses. The backdrop helps explain the fee pressure: Bitcoin rallied roughly 40% between mid-August and early October, then reversed below $70,000 as inflation concerns, higher bond yields and the US midterm elections weighed on sentiment.

Non-Trading Income Reaches 52% of Margin

The earnings release doubles as a progress report on Payward's attempt to earn less of its money from transaction fees. Income tied to client assets and to access to products, data and services reached 52% of total platform margin, up from 46% a year earlier, as the company built out a structure spanning trading, banking, asset management and Payward Services, its financial-infrastructure arm for other companies. Artificial intelligence was added as a fifth pillar, with plans for a personal finance agent and investment funds built on the xStocks tokenized equities platform. Earlier this week Payward added more than 200 tokenized stocks from UK and European markets, including FTSE 100 and DAX 40 constituents, taking xStocks past 1,500 assets, $1.1 billion in assets under management and $45 billion in cumulative transaction volume, per company figures. In November, a Payward-affiliated fund and its clients bought an undisclosed amount of AAVE tokens on secondary markets as the company and the decentralized lender explore further collaboration.

Banking and market access are moving in parallel. Payward has held talks with Wells Fargo about supplying liquidity for crypto trading and separately discussed an infrastructure partnership with BNY covering custody, wealth management, trading and payments. In October it agreed to acquire Saldo Finance Oy, the Finnish parent of Lithuania-licensed Saldo Bank, a deal expected to close in 2027 pending regulatory approval that would add European deposit accounts, lending and payment cards. Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority granted full approval in October, opening the way for trading and local currency deposits in the UAE. The shareholder letter also confirms plans to enter prediction markets and launch a proprietary token, with no timeline or tokenomics disclosed, and to offer onchain crypto futures to US customers, subject to regulatory approval.

The sequential recovery is real but narrow: EBITDA up 163% from the second quarter still leaves earnings at about a third of last year's level, which tells us the new revenue pillars are cushioning the margin line rather than repairing the earnings line. The shareholder letter, the primary record here, puts the weight of that transition on 7.1 million funded accounts and a 52% non-trading income share, both of which grew while volumes fell 30%. With the IPO potentially slipping to at least the second quarter of 2027, after a confidential draft registration filed with the SEC in November 2025 and an $800 million raise at a $20 billion valuation, execution on banking, tokenization and the new token plans carries the extra weight a public-market deadline would otherwise impose.