There is no doubt that cryptocurrencies have gone mainstream. Besides the greater involvement of institutional players in the market, and governments scrutinizing the market more, crypto exchanges are also taking advantage of the current environment to go public. The latest of these is Kraken.
While the exchange has not officially announced that it will be going public, the crypto exchange CEO, Jesse Powell, hinted at it during an interview with Bloomberg. He stated that the IPO was likely to take place at some point in 2022 but offered no guarantee to his assertion.
The hints of Kraken going public are also evident in the moves that the exchange has been making recently. In February, the company did a round of funding and aimed to push its valuation to $10 billion. The funding round attracted several notable investors, including General Atlantic, Fidelity, and Tribe Capital.
Fox Business Reporter Charles Gasparino has also highlighted news of Kraken going public. Gasparino stated that the company would be going public either through an IPO (Initial Public Offering) or a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company). If it chooses to do it through a SPAC, it would create a company with no commercial operations and use it to raise capital in an IPO. On the other hand, if it chooses to go public through an IPO, the company would be selling its shares.
SCOOP: @krakenfx execs eying going public possibly through a SPAC or IPO possibly sometime next year as online crypto exchange's customer growth ramps up; industry sources expect a raft of crypto SPACs this summer and with that, much more regulatory scrutiny more now @FoxBusiness
— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) March 16, 2021
Gasparino also made the same speculations that Kraken CEO had made about the IPO, stating that it could happen sometime in the nearest future. He noted that the crypto industry expects to see several SPACs this year, in a bullish comment for the industry. This development is a signal of how far the crypto industry has come and the potential it holds.
