Kraken Crypto Exchange Had Three Times More Law Enforcement Requests in 2018, 475 in Total

The popular virtual currency exchange Kraken announced that it received three times more law enforcement requests in 2018. Compared to 2017, the number of these requests increased substantially. Regulatory authorities in the United States are becoming more active players in the virtual currency market.

The information was released by the exchange short time ago. According to the infographic released by the company, the exchange received 475 law enforcement request last year. In 2017, this number was just 160. Back in 2015, it was 39.

The United States accounted for most of the law enforcement requests in 2018 (315), followed by the United Kingdom (61) and Germany (34). The Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in the United Staes performed most of the requests to the exchange (91). This agency was followed by the FBI issuing 67 subpoenas. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registered 40 requests.

The crypto exchange wrote on Twitter that some companies block users from the United States because it costs very expensive to handle this large amount of subpoenas.

Peek at our Compliance team's 2018 Transparency Report. You can see why many businesses choose to block US users. Cost of handling subpoenas (regardless of licenses) is quickly becoming a barrier to entry. Inquiries up 3x YoY. pic.twitter.com/YbyLEqhOUf

— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) January 5, 2019

Jesse Powell, the CEO, and co-founder of Kraken said back in April 2018 that they do not provide any information about its business. At that time, the New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s office requested disclosures on their operations such as the use of bots, conflicts of interest and more.

Ran NeuNer, the popular digital asset analyst, commented that the cost of making business in the United States is passed to the consumer that has to pay more for the products and services that it uses.

This shows that regulatory agencies in the United States took a step forward trying to receive more information about those using the platform and how these activities are performed.

The cost of doing Crypto business in the USA as disclosed by Kraken. There are so many different and disjointed departments all looking to enforce their little piece of jurisdiction – ultimately these costs are passed onto the consumer. pic.twitter.com/FQc5gbiC5m

— Ran NeuNer (@cryptomanran) January 6, 2019

Kraken is currently the 25th largest digital exchange in the market. In the last 24 hours, it handled $127 million in trading volume. The most popular trading pairs were BTC/USD, BTC/EUR, and ETH/USD.