No doubt that the deal will go down in the annals of financial history. This Thursday, Kraken, the cryptocurrency exchange platform, announced that it had established, within a regional branch of the Federal Reserve, what is called a “master account” directly linking it, like a “real bank,” to the plumbing of the entire American monetary system. A major development in the integration of cryptocurrencies into the traditional financial system.
Essentially, a master account is an account opened directly on the books of the Federal Reserve. It allows a bank to settle its payments in central bank money, access payment systems, and manage its liquidity. All this, without going through another intermediary bank, as was previously the case for a cryptocurrency platform.
This agreement is also a first, between a bank specializing in cryptos, Kraken Financial, licensed by the state of Wyoming, and the financial institution that manages an average of $4.6 trillion per day nationally through the Fedwire system. It is even more unprecedented as ten years ago, the Fed in Washington, under Ben Bernanke, was very cautious about the use of cryptoassets.
In the United States, and particularly under the second term of Donald Trump, the winds have changed. By definitively burying the Federal Reserve Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) project, the American president also boasted of putting an end to the “federal war against crypto” through his decrees.
To make America “the global capital of cryptos”, the former real estate tycoon promotes support for dollar-pegged stablecoins issued by private companies, with the help of new federal-level legislative texts (Genius Act, Clarity Act). As a public figure, in March 2025, he endowed the federal government with a strategic reserve of bitcoin and other crypto-assets.
