Share this article
Law Enforcement Data Requests Rose by Almost 50 Percent in 2019, Says Kraken
The exchange's CEO said the cost of responding to law enforcement requests for user data was over $1 million.
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 12:06 p.m. Published Jan 7, 2020, 12:00 p.m.
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has said the cost of responding to law enforcement requests for user data is rising sharply year on year.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
In a tweet on Tuesday, the firm posted an infographic teasing its new 2019 Transparency Report, indicating it had received 710 information requests in total – 49 percent more than in 2018. Last year, the exchange received 475 requests and just 160 were dealt with in 2017.
The country issuing most requests in 2019 was the U.S. with 432 (almost 61 percent of the total). The FBI issues most requests of the U.S. agencies, followed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The U.K. was the second nation in terms of request volume, with 86 (12 percent), followed by Germany (44) and Italy (20).
Further set out in the infographic, of 1,222 user accounts affected by requests, 62 percent had data returned to the issuing agency. The remaining 28 percent were "non-valid," meaning they "did not meet local legal requirements" or Kraken's policy on law enforcement requests.
Kraken co-founder and CEO Jesse Powell said in a tweet the cost of servicing such law enforcement requests in a "high-wage market" (the firm is based in California) was more than $1 million in 2019.
"Several things contribute to the cost. Older business with more than eight years of data, millions of accounts, high security around accessibility of personal data, the good stuff is all encrypted and hard/slow/impossible to search/export in bulk (upside being its that way for hackers too)," he said in another post.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
U.S. Senate's Crypto Market Structure Bill Gets Messy as Calendar Weighs Down
The White House has shut down proposals, and lawmakers are circulating the Democrats' asks in what had been a close negotiation, revealing 11th-hour pressure.
What to know:
- Democrats shared a response to Republicans outlining their continuing priorities for a crypto market structure bill, which they said was intended to "reach an agreement and proceed towards a mark-up."
- The document laid out concerns with financial stability, market integrity and public officials' ability to trade and profit off of crypto, echoing concerns laid out in a framework Democrats shared in September.
- The Senate is running out of time in the Congressional calendar to hold a markup hearing — a key step toward progressing the bill — before 2025 ends.
Top Stories
