Kraken sues crypto derivatives firm PowerTrade over missing funds

In 2022, Kraken began institutional cryptocurrency derivatives trading on PowerTrade, a company operated out of El Salvador and co-founded by Mario Gomez Lozada and Bernd Sischka.

In October 2025, when the price of bitcoin fell and markets declined, Kraken said it became concerned about PowerTrade’s liquidity and creditworthiness and tried to withdraw its funds, but was unable to, according to the filing.

Rather than returning the funds, the lawsuit claims that PowerTrade carried out a series of unauthorized transactions that moved Kraken’s account from holding more than $6 million to a negative balance of nearly $2 million.

This was done through a block of around 100 “corrections,” related to trades that had expired or settled months earlier, the filing said. Payward said in the filing that it was concerned that PowerTrade would rely on the “debt” it had artificially created to appropriate Payward’s bitcoin collateral.

PowerTrade did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

UPDATE (June. 25, 16:45 UTC): Updates amount of losses as per new filing, removes mention of DIFC freezing order