Does it say that Jesse Powell be implementing Lightning for Kraken soon, or is it just an article?
In December, they
announced that the Lightning Network support was expected to be available in the first half of 2021. It looks like they are still working on it.
Exchanges should start becoming some of the main liquidity providers, and client-side UI providers for the Lightning Network, and bring it to a higher point of growth.
They probably don't feel any pressure to do so because: 1) The transaction fees have been extremely low for quite some time now. 2) Even if any large exchange implements Lightning late, there still will be a lot of people willing to open a channel with their node.
You left out #3 withdrawal fees are a source of profit for exchanges.
https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000767986-Cryptocurrency-withdrawal-fees-and-minimumsBitcoin 0.00015 BTC (fee) 0.0005 BTC (min withdraw)
So at the moment $9.30 to withdraw. And according to mempool.space and a few others 4 sat/vb will get you into the next block.
And you have to have at least $30 in there to withdraw. How many people will just pay the fee or if they don't have 0.0005
BTC trade it for something else (they get the trading fee) and then withdraw that (whatever that coin fee is)
Where if they are doing lightning they can't get away with charging that much. Because, if they do a lot of people will scream.
-Dave