Kraken targets Australia and UK markets with new additions

The US-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has announced new trading pairs available to customers from the UK and Australia

Investors in the UK and Australia will be thrilled following Kraken’s move to expand its listings. The exchange has introduced a total of 14 new assets that can be traded against the British pound sterling (GBP) and Australian dollar (AUD). The addition also features 26 new trading pairs. Half (13) of the new trading pairs are tied to the Australian dollar and the other half to the pound sterling.

According to a blog post published yesterday by the exchange, Kraken is looking to stamp its position even further in the two markets.

“As we further our expansion into markets that have substantial potential for growth, Kraken is more than doubling the number of trading pairs available to clients using both the British pound sterling (GBP) and the Australian dollar (AUD)“, the exchange wrote. “With the addition of 26 new trading pairs, Kraken’s GBP and AUD clients now have more seamless access to 14 assets and related services such as our hugely popular staking rewards“.

This is the largest expansion of trading pairs by Kraken in its nine years of its existence. The exchange detailed that the UK and Australia regions present a ‘substantial upside potential’. The exchange explained that the UK is one of the most active crypto regions, whereas Australia is a booming market. Kraken has been in Australia for only eight months, having made its entry in June last year.

Jonathon Miller, Kraken’s managing director for Australia, stated, “The digital currency industry is at a critical tipping point as institutional investors start to allocate into the asset class“.

The majority of the newly listed pairs are tokens for DeFi apps. Some of the new offering pairs are Chainlink (LINK), Stellar (XLM), Filecoin (FIL), Graph Protocol (GRT) Cosmos (ATOM), Polkadot (DOT), Cardano (ADA), Synthetix (SNX) and Kusama (KSM). Australian traders will also have access to Aave (AAVE).

“With trading pairs for Aave (AAVE) and Synthetix (SNX) […] Kraken now provides AUD and GBP clients with a far more direct route into  decentralised finance (DeFi), a space whose total value increased by more than twenty-fold last year.”