Kraken, one of many world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has tentative plans to go public subsequent yr, in line with CEO Jesse Powell.Powell
Kraken, one of many world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has tentative plans to go public subsequent yr, in line with CEO Jesse Powell.
Powell appeared on a phase on CNBC after Kraken revealed record-breaking fourth-quarter outcomes, together with a surge in buying and selling volumes and new consumer signups.
“The primary quarter simply utterly blew away the whole thing of final yr,” he mentioned. “We beat final yr’s numbers by the top of February. The entire market has actually simply exploded.”
Relating to a possible inventory market debut, Powell mentioned 2022 is a probable goal for a brand new itemizing:
“We’re taking a look at having the ability to go public someday subsequent yr. […] It could most likely be a direct itemizing, much like Coinbase.”
Coinbase plans to stage its public providing on April 14, offering Wall Avenue with a extra standard technique to achieve publicity to the crypto growth. Not like a conventional preliminary public providing, the corporate will go public via a direct itemizing. Which means the present house owners of Coinbase shares will convert their holdings to make them out there for itemizing — a transfer that avoids a prolonged, pricey underwriting course of.
Like Kraken, Coinbase is coming off a record-breaking first quarter, with revenues hitting $1.eight billion following a 276% surge in buying and selling quantity.
Though Kraken is unlikely to realize the identical $100 billion valuation that many analysts are predicting for Coinbase, a public itemizing would probably nonetheless be huge. Final month, Kraken informed Cointelegraph that its public itemizing would merely be “too massive” to undergo a particular goal acquisition firm, or SPAC.
An organization spokesperson defined:
“If Kraken would resolve to go public, it will accomplish that via a direct itemizing and never via a SPAC as we’re too massive to go that route.”