In brief
- The pledge was announced by Sen. Cynthia Lummis to the Wyoming Legislature before Kraken publicly confirmed the commitment.
- Kraken has not said whether it will match Treasury’s funding of $1,000 for “Trump Accounts” or how they will be invested.
- The move follows the SEC’s withdrawal of its 2023 case against Kraken amid a broader easing of crypto enforcement.
Kraken will sponsor a Trump Account for every child born in Wyoming in 2026, the Cheyenne-headquartered exchange announced Monday, a move some experts say is less about philanthropy than a “loyalty signal” to the state that made it America’s home for crypto.
The Trump accounts, created under the Working Families Tax Cut, provide $1,000 from the U.S. Treasury to eligible children until 2028, with families and outside entities allowed to contribute additional funds that become accessible once a child turns 18.
It is unclear whether Kraken will match that $1,000 figure and whether accounts will invest in cash or crypto. Decrypt has approached the exchange for comment.
U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) broke the news to the Wyoming Legislature on Monday, addressing both chambers before Kraken confirmed the commitment in a separate statement.
“In principle, it is a good initiative from Kraken to sponsor the accounts and support financial inclusion,” Musheer Ahmed, founder and managing director of Finstep Asia, told Decrypt.
“Having said that, it is important that ethical considerations are in place and there is no undue political influence or benefit to Kraken with the contribution,” Ahmed added. “This would diminish the impact of the contribution significantly.”
By sponsoring a program branded with a sitting president’s name, the exchange appears publicly entwined with the Trump administration’s domestic policy agenda, and one expert says that carries risks.
“Kraken’s pledge is not so much philanthropy; reality is, it is a loyalty signal,” Joshua Chu, a lawyer, lecturer, and co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association, told Decrypt.
“Locally, it helps lock in Wyoming’s ‘crypto experiment’ ahead of the mid-term elections and turns Kraken into the home-team exchange backing Trump’s flagship savings program for newborns, conveniently after its SEC matter was suspiciously dropped with prejudice,” he added.
Last March, the SEC agreed in principle to end its 2023 lawsuit, which alleged that Kraken operated as an unregistered securities exchange, broker-dealer, and clearing agency. The case was dropped without any admission of wrongdoing or financial penalty.
The withdrawal followed the appointment of crypto-friendly leadership at the SEC in 2025, after years of stricter enforcement under the previous Biden administration, and was accompanied by similar dismissals in cases against Coinbase, Robinhood, and Uniswap Labs.
Kraken’s co-CEO, Arjun Seth, said Monday in a tweet that “long-term commitment should follow” after Wyoming created “thoughtful policy for builders” in previous years.
Wyoming’s early adoption of a special-purpose banking charter for digital-asset firms in 2019 gave crypto companies clearer custody and compliance rules well before similar frameworks emerged elsewhere.
“You don’t reward clarity with short-term presence. You reward it with alignment,” Seth said, adding that Monday’s move was not a “marketing campaign,” but a “systems decision.”
“By seeding accounts for every Wyoming newborn in 2026, we are making a simple statement: when jurisdictions build clear systems, companies should invest generationally,” Seth added. “This is not a gift. It is an investment in Wyoming’s future.”
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