Kraken is giving traders a faster lane into its exchange with a new colocation cross-connect service run through Liquidity Connect at Equinix London. The Kraken colocation service is aimed at cutting delay to less than one millisecond, and the pitch is familiar: if speed matters in FX and CFDs, crypto traders now want the same treatment.
The service is open to both institutional and individual clients, which is the interesting part. Crypto venues have spent years talking about access and fairness; now they are also copying the infrastructure playbook that traditional markets have used for ages. Kraken’s recent UK EMI authorization from the FCA, alongside its existing MiFID permission, also gives the exchange more of the regulatory furniture that institutional clients tend to look for before they wire anything serious.
Equinix London joins Kraken’s execution stack
Liquidity Connect says the service uses direct fiber cross-connects to its virtual private servers and dedicated bare metal servers, creating deterministic ultra-low-latency connectivity. In plain English: fewer hops, fewer excuses, and less time for the market to move away while an order is still making its way through the plumbing.
The company also says deployment can happen in less than 30 minutes and that clients get dedicated IP addresses, DDoS protection, redundant power systems, and 24/7 support from its engineers. That package sounds unglamorous, but in trading infrastructure, boring is usually what people pay for.
Kraken colocation in London borrows from FX and CFDs
The move mirrors what has long been standard in FX and index CFDs, where colocation and proximity hosting are used to improve execution quality. Major venues and liquidity hubs such as Hotspot, EBS, Currenex, and bank LPs already sit inside data-center ecosystems built around speed, stability, and predictable fills. Crypto is late to that party, but it is finally showing up in proper shoes.
- Target latency: less than one millisecond
- Connectivity: direct fiber cross-connects
- Hosting: Equinix London
- Client access: institutional and individual
Dennis Miranda-Cruz, head of business at Liquidity Connect, said the partnership is meant to deliver ”the speed and security previously reserved for major financial institutions.” That is the right sales line, but the broader point is that exchanges are being judged less like crypto startups and more like market infrastructure. If they want sticky liquidity, they need to look and feel like infrastructure.
The next battle is execution quality
Kraken says the service supports its work on market infrastructure and fair access for participants. That is a sensible message, because the next phase of crypto competition will not be won by branding alone. It will be won by latency, uptime, and whether traders trust the venue enough to send size when volatility spikes.
Expect rivals to keep leaning into the same arms race. Once one major exchange starts selling sub-millisecond access out of a big-name data center, everyone else has to decide whether to match it or explain why their traders should be happy waiting longer. Not a fun conversation.