Canada regulatory requirements overview

Kraken is in the process of becoming registered as a Restricted Dealer across Canada, which will help maintain the integrity of our operations and allow us to continue offering the best possible product to our valued Canadian clients. Becoming licensed in Canada requires us to make a number of changes to our products and services.

Below you will find an overview of the changes that may impact Canadian clients:

Investor Questionnaire

Upon signing up for a Kraken account, or the next time you log in to our platform, you will be presented with our investor questionnaire. The purpose of this questionnaire is to determine your risk profile and your understanding of the risks associated with trading cryptocurrencies. To do this, we will ask you questions about your past investing experience, your risk tolerance and your financial situation.

New reporting and notifications

Canadian clients will receive account statements on a monthly basis starting in August 2023. Every month thereafter, clients will receive the account statement for the prior month.

Kraken will also send emails to clients who have exceeded a recommended loss threshold, which we will determine based on your answers to the Investor Questionnaire. Please see here for a more detailed explanation of how loss notifications will work.

New Terms of Service and Legal disclosures

We are updating our Terms of Service for our Canadian clients. Existing clients will be asked to acknowledge these new terms the next time they log into their Kraken account.

Additionally, we are adding a number of Canada-specific disclosures to our website. New and existing clients will be asked to acknowledge our Platform Risk Statement before being able to use our platform. This allows us to be even more transparent with our clients.

If you would like more details on how we protect your personal information, you can read our Privacy Notice.

Purchasing limits and client status

Kraken must implement net purchase limits for some Canadian clients over a rolling 12-month period. These net purchase limits apply to purchases of all cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

If you live in British Columbia, Manitoba, or Quebec, these limits do not apply.

The limits are summarized below:

If you qualify as a Permitted Client or Accredited Investor, you will not be subject to a net purchase limit.
If you qualify as an Eligible Investor, you will be limited to a net purchase amount of CAD $100,000 in a rolling 12-month period.
All other clients will be limited to a net purchase amount of CAD $30,000 in a rolling 12-month period.

To find out more about the net purchase limits and see examples of how they work please refer to this support article.

To understand the eligibility criteria for Permitted Client, Accredited Investor and Eligible Investor, please refer to this support article.

Our Support team is available 24/7 if you have any additional questions.

Article last updated: 24 July, 2023.