Connecting Kraken (coming soon)

Kraken Spot integration for crypto trading on Thesis. Currently in private cohort rollout — public availability after the 2026-05-22 soak window.

Thesis supports Kraken Spot as a second crypto venue alongside Alpaca. The integration is built and tested but in a private cohort rollout — public availability lands after the 2026-05-22 smart-stops soak window.

This page documents the integration for anyone who’s invited to the cohort or curious about what’s coming.

Why Kraken?

Alpaca’s crypto is convenient (one broker, equity + crypto, single dashboard) but its spread cost is roughly 0.5% round-trip — about 2× the cost of native exchange spot trading. Kraken Spot’s effective round-trip on a maker-taker fill is closer to 0.26%, which matters a lot when your strategy turns over frequently.

For crypto-heavy users, Kraken can roughly halve the fee drag.

What’s built

Per-user BYOK with the same envelope-encryption flow used for Alpaca keys.
Alpaca continues to handle equity orders; Kraken handles crypto.
Kraken-only users (no Alpaca connection) trade crypto only — equity signals are skipped.
QR-code paste setup for fast onboarding (paste an export from Kraken’s UI). Camera scan available on mobile builds.

What’s gated

Order placement is currently disabled by default — we’ll flip it on per-user as we ramp the cohort.
Practice/paper mode is not supported on Kraken — Kraken Spot is live-only. Stay on Alpaca paper for sandboxing.

When can I connect?

Public availability fires after the smart-stops soak (target date 2026-05-22). At that point:

Settings → Connect Kraken will appear in the app.
You’ll need a Kraken account with Trade API permissions (no withdraw, no fund move — read + place orders only).
The connection flow looks identical to Alpaca’s — paste keys, validate, save.

What changes when you connect Kraken

Crypto signals route to Kraken instead of Alpaca, on the assets Kraken supports (BTC, ETH, SOL, LINK, AVAX, LTC, BCH, MATIC, etc.).
Equity signals continue to route to your Alpaca connection (if you have one). Equity-only users with no Alpaca connection see no equity signals.
Crypto fees come directly from Kraken, the same way live fees come from Alpaca today.

Heads-up: PDT and account size

Kraken Spot has no PDT restrictions — it’s crypto, no FINRA rule applies. This makes Kraken especially attractive for sub-$25k accounts that bump against Alpaca’s 3-day-trade limit on equity. You can run crypto as your unlimited-trade lane on Kraken while keeping equity on a more deliberate cadence with Alpaca.

Get notified

Drop your email at thesistrade.app and we’ll ping you when Kraken opens up. Or email support@thesistrade.app directly.