Exclusive: Kraken CEO fires at Saylor’s latest criticism originally appeared on TheStreet .

In a Roundtable interview at Bitcoin 2025 conference, co-CEO Dave Ripley defended Kraken ’s longstanding proof of reserves practice in response to criticism from Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor .

Saylor had argued that on-chain proof of reserves “weakens the security of issuers, custodians and investors” and warned that publishing wallet addresses “exposes firms to traceability and long-term vulnerabilities.”

Ripley noted, “We are the first one to do proof-of-reserves all the way back a decade ago. We partner with a third-party auditor to do that. There’s a way in which they can attest that their balances were included in the proof of reserves and that a third-party auditor tests and does the validation on chain that the assets match each of the customer liabilities that we have associated with their accounts on the platform.”

He emphasized that proof of reserves is “one piece in the puzzle of building trust” and added that it complements “traditional financial audits that we also have in place.”

Proof of Reserves (PoR) is a cryptographic method that lets crypto exchanges publicly prove they hold enough assets to match customer deposits. It typically involves third-party audits and on-chain verification to confirm balances without exposing sensitive user data. The goal is to build trust by showing the exchange isn’t secretly undercollateralized or insolvent.

Addressing Saylor’s security concerns

Ripley pushed back on Saylor’s assertion that on-chain transparency creates new risks.

“From our proof of reserve, we’re not actually going through and doing this public publishing of all the different addresses of all the different auditors,” he explained.

“At the end of the day, this stuff is transparent and public and on-chain. And if you go look at Chainalysis or any of these different vendors, they’ve pretty much identified which wallets are Coinbase ’s and Kraken’s and all the others. So, regardless of whether you do proof of reserves or not, that information’s actually already in existence out there anyway.”

Ripley also clarified the difference between one-to-one asset backing and simple proof of capitalization.

“It’s one thing to have the assets back one-to-one — one Bitcoin in a customer account, one Bitcoin in the actual crypto wallet. It’s another to say, hey, that Bitcoin you deposit is here, but I’ve actually changed it into a different form, another crypto asset, or I’ve even lent it out and I now have a liability from someone else to pay me back that Bitcoin that is actually there in your account."