Kraken is about to IPO, what targets can be hyped

Kraken is about to IPO, what targets can be hyped

Author: kkk, BlockBeats

On July 30, crypto trading platform Kraken reported that it was seeking to raise about $500 million in financing at a valuation of $15 billion, which attracted great attention in the market. The news coincides with the gradual warming of the U.S. regulatory environment: in March 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially dropped the securities violation charges against Kraken, and just last week, Fortune revealed that the FBI had also ended its investigation into Kraken's founder, thus freeing Kraken from multiple regulatory shadows. Meanwhile, Kraken's official social media has frequently hinted at potential listing plans, further fueling market imagination.

Previously, CRCL rose as much as 10 times after completing its IPO in June, providing a strong contrast to market expectations. If Kraken is successfully listed, it may set off another round of emotional upsurge - it is worth paying attention to: which targets will become the "hype pioneers" in this feast?

The pre-IPO investment boom is coming, and retail investors can also rush to pre-listing

As top companies such as OpenAI and SpaceX maintain privatization for a long time, a large number of original employees and early investors want to cash out their equity in advance before going public. And Forge is the trading market that connects these "want to sell" people and investors who "want to buy in advance". Now that Kraken's listing expectations are hot, private equity trading platforms such as Forge may become an indirect entry point for retail investors to bet if their employees or institutions start selling equity.

On the Forge platform, investors can usually buy shares of an unlisted company in two ways: the first is direct trading, where you find a holder willing to sell Kraken equity and negotiate a price with them. Forge assists with KYC, due diligence, and contract signing. The second is through SPV transactions (Forge Funds), where Forge sets up a dedicated special purpose entity (SPV) to pool buyer funds and purchase the target company's equity in a unified manner. You are holding a share of the SPV, not the company's shares themselves. This bypasses ROFR and is more suitable for investors who want to enter quickly, even completing transactions in a few days. After Kraken's real IPO, SPV is also expected to receive liquidity cash.

Currently priced at $36.13 on the Forge platform, it represents a remarkable 200% increase in a year, reflecting the market's enthusiasm for the anticipation of Kraken's listing. With a valuation of about $10 billion, if Kraken can successfully go public at a valuation of $15 billion, current entrants may receive an excess return of more than 50%.

In addition, the tokenization of private equity is also bringing new investment opportunities to retail investors, including platforms such as Republic and Robinhood that have supported technology companies such as OpenAI and SpaceX, and whether they will also support Kraken in the future is also worth paying attention to.

Benchmarking Coinbase's Base chain, Ink becomes the core of the next round of L2 narrative

Following Coinbase's launch of the Base chain as a traffic hub in the Layer 2 sector, Kraken has also officially entered the market, firing the first shot of its Layer 2 strategy with the Ink network. Ink is a Layer 2 blockchain built on Ethereum's OP Stack, focusing on high-speed throughput, low latency, and native compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), aiming to become the DeFi hub on Superchain, providing solid underlying support for future transactions, payments, and on-chain financial infrastructure. The network is led by Kraken, and its native token, $INK, will be issued by the subsidiary Ink Foundation and distributed to eligible active users and ecosystem participants through the Kraken trading platform's airdrop program. Although no specific distribution standards and timelines have been announced, this news has become the focus of the market.

On June 17, the Ink Foundation announced that the total $INK supply will be permanently capped at 1 billion, with no additional issuance or governance rights, and will only be used for ecological incentives and user layer use, positioning itself closer to the "fuel" attribute rather than traditional governance tokens. The first clear use case is the native liquidity protocol powered by Aave, which is a key part of Ink's advancement of the onchain capital stack. The protocol natively integrates the lending mechanism into the Ink chain, providing users with efficient and convenient on-chain fund scheduling services.

Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi stated that Ink's mission is to deeply integrate "production-grade on-chain systems" into Kraken's product system, promoting the strategic migration of centralized platforms to on-chain financial systems. The board of directors of the Ink Foundation called this "a pivotal moment", believing that the launch of Ink marks the beginning of the integration of CeFi and DeFi, and is also a substantial step towards the vision of a unified global capital market.

With the official launch of the mainnet, Ink's ecosystem is beginning to take shape. The platform has opened the memecoin launch tool Inkypump, and the first mascot token $ANITA once rushed to a market capitalization of $8 million, but is now stable around $4 million. While $INK's TGE has not yet been announced, there is strong market anticipation for Ink's potential, spurred by success stories from L2 projects like Base.

Referring to the rapid climb of the Base Chain in terms of ecological activity, TVL, and number of projects, as well as the performance of ecological tokens built around it such as $VIRTUAL and $ZORA, Ink, which is directly endorsed by the Kraken team and will bring its own traffic and resources, has the potential to become the next popular L2 mainline. It is expected that once $INK launches circulation and opens trading in the future, it is bound to become one of the "orthodox" representatives under the CeFi hype narrative, especially in the context of Kraken's intention to deeply bind its trading capabilities to on-chain scenarios, Ink is not only an L2, but also likely to become the core of Kraken's onchain strategy. For investors who want to get an early slot on Kraken's IPO and the next round of L2 hotspots, Ink and its ecological target are worth paying attention to.

summary

In addition to crypto trading and Layer 2 network construction, Kraken has also been actively expanding its broader financial territory recently. In 2025, Kraken acquired Ninja Trader, a leading retail futures trading platform in the United States, for $1.5 billion, and officially entered the CFTC-regulated derivatives market, opening up a key channel between CeFi and TradFi. At the same time, Kraken has also launched the payment app Krak, which supports instant reward transfers of more than 300 crypto and fiat assets, and will expand to lending and credit card services in the future to create a comprehensive crypto payment experience. This series of layouts not only lays the foundation for Kraken to build a super financial platform but is also seen as an important prelude to its IPO plan that has been in the works for many years. As the product line expands, revenue growth grows, and the regulatory environment continues to improve, Kraken's path to official listing is accelerating.

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