American cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has appointed Alex Mehrdad as the next leader of the company’s Canadian business.
Mehrdad recently took the reins as the San Francisco-based company’s general manager of Canada from former Canadian managing director Mark Greenberg, who was promoted earlier this year to leading Kraken’s newly established global asset growth and management division.
“Kraken is committed to Canada, so we’re here to stay.”
Alex Mehrdad, Kraken’s new Canadian general manager
The move follows a period of growth in Canada for Kraken, which began building a dedicated Canadian team in fall 2022, committed to working with Canadian securities regulators early last year when it filed a pre-registration undertaking, including a ‘coming-out party’ in August 2023 alongside Coinbase at Toronto’s Blockchain Futurist Conference.
Kraken claims that over the past year, under Greenberg’s leadership, it has doubled the size of its Canadian business. “What happened is Kraken Canada was a big success within Kraken,” Mehrdad told BetaKit in an interview at this year’s edition of the Blockchain Futurist Conference.
On the back of this growth, Mehrdad said Greenberg has been tasked with bigger responsibilities. Mehrdad, who previously worked under Greenberg as Kraken’s head of commercial strategy for Canada, has been promoted to steering the next phase of the crypto firm’s Canadian operations.
“Canada has cultivated some of the best talent in the industry,” Greenberg told BetaKit. “[Mehrdad] has been a linchpin of our Canadian business, and I look forward to seeing all he accomplishes with his expanded mandate. As I transition to a global role, I carry with me the lessons and energy from leading in Canada, and I’m ready to channel that energy on a global scale, driving the next wave of wealth building with crypto.”
Mehrdad brings a background in management consultancy and experience building FinTech and crypto startups to Kraken. Greenberg and Mehrdad were both hired by Kraken in the fall of 2022 to help grow the company’s Canadian business and have worked alongside each other to do just that since then.
At the time, Kraken was not new to Canada: it had operated in the country for years, providing crypto trading services and amassing a sizable employee base. Today, Kraken claims it is one of Canada’s largest crypto employers, with a local workforce of 250 people. Some of these folks work on Kraken’s Canadian business, while others focus on global products and initiatives.
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The company noted that Mehrdad helped double Kraken’s number of Canadian monthly transacting users since the start of this year.
Mehrdad described the new role as a natural progression from what he was already doing at Kraken. He will remain based in New York in the new position but travel to Canada frequently.
According to Mehrdad, Canada represents an important market for Kraken overall. “Canada can be a global leader in terms of crypto—both adoption and also innovation,” he argued, citing the country’s history of launching the first Bitcoin ATM and crypto ETFs, as well as the work of local crypto companies like Dapper Labs, which “put NFTs on the map.”
According to Mehrdad, the “regulatory clarity” Canada offers in terms of having created a clear path for crypto exchanges to become registered is part of what makes it such an attractive market to Kraken.
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Kraken is currently working towards obtaining a restricted dealer licence in Canada with the Canadian Securities Administrators—something Coinbase has already achieved—alongside other international players, including Crypto.com and Gemini. For his part, Mehrdad said he is excited to expand his focus to include supporting these efforts.
This comes as Kraken and other United States (US) crypto firms have faced a regulatory crackdown at home, as Kraken has fought a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the alleged unregistered sale of securities.
Kraken claims that over the past year it has doubled the size of its Canadian business.
Mehrdad’s vision for Kraken’s Canadian business involves building on the company’s recent growth, ensuring regulatory compliance, and working with other industry players. To support its efforts on the latter front, Kraken has joined industry advocacy organizations like the Canadian Web3 Council and the Canadian Blockchain Consortium.
“We want to really help push forward the adoption of crypto in Canada,” said Mehrdad, who noted that Kraken’s broader goal is to do just that on a global basis.
Since Kraken began prioritizing the Canadian market in recent years, the landscape of Canada’s crypto industry has shifted a fair bit. Following pressure from regulators, international Kraken competitors like Binance, Bitstamp, and others have pulled out of Canada, while Toronto’s WonderFi has either wholly acquired or purchased assets from Bitvo, Bitbuy, Coinberry, CoinSmart, and Coinsquare and migrated them to Bitbuy and Coinsquare.
“There has been a lot of consolidation,” Mehrdad acknowledged. “The crypto landscape seems relatively stable now. There’s a few big players that have emerged, [and] a lot of smaller or other players have exited the market. Kraken is committed to Canada, so we’re here to stay.”
Feature image courtesy Kraken.