Kraken Names New UK Chief Amid Expansion; Prepares To Share User Data With IRS

Kraken announced a new managing director for its U.K. business as the crypto exchange looks to strengthen its foothold in its largest market.

The exchange has also revealed that user information will be shared with the IRS in the next month after it receives a court order to do so.

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U.K. Markets Has A New Boss

Bivu Das has been named as the new UK managing director for Kraken after Blair Halliday stepped down from the role to pursue other opportunities, as reported by Bloomberg. Halliday joined Kraken in October 2022 after serving at Gemini’s U.K. operations. Das is the former head of operations strategy at fintech Starling Bank.

In early October, Kaiko Data indicated that Kraken was the largest GBP market in the past few months since Binance officially closed U.K. operations in June 2023. It became the largest provider of cryptocurrency trading volume denominated in British pounds.

The exchange will enhance its marketing efforts in the U.K. in late 2023 through physical advertisements in London locations.

Read More: Kraken Embraces PayPal For Pivotal Crypto Shift In Europe, UK

The U.K. prevalent exchange is also looking to expand operations in the U.S. through its unit, Kraken Securities, expected to launch in 2024.

User Data To Be Shared With IRS

After a June court order, Kraken announced that it would share certain user information with the IRS in early November 2023, as reported by The Block. The data concerns Kraken U.S. users with transactions exceeding $20,000 from 2016 to 2020. Through an email, Kraken notified its users that it would provide certain customer information to the IRS.

The number of users as per the order stands at 42,017 which is lower than the initial court-ordered 59,331 Kraken users. Also, the crypto exchange managed to significantly reduce the amount of client data that it will present to the IRS.

The spat with the IRS traces back to May 2021 when a court authorized the IRS to serve a John Doe summons on Kraken and subsidiaries for identifying tax evaders. Later, the IRS stated that the exchange was not complying with the summons.

In similar moves, Coinbase shared details of around 13,000 users with the IRS in 2018. Also, Poloniex and Circle received a similar summons from the IRS in 2021.

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