By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 23rd, 2024
Kraken’s business is highly correlated with the performance of the broader market as the firm moves forward with its plans.
American cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is still on track to make its public market debut through a direct listing scheduled for 2022. As reported by Coindesk, citing the company’s Head of Growth, Dan Held, who made an appearance at this year’s Consensus, the public listing plans has not been impacted by the recent correction in the global crypto market.
“Everything seems to still be on track for a direct listing sometime in 2022, but I don’t have any idea of what timing that might be,” he said
The listing of rival firm, Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN) back in April, marked an entirely new milestone for the industry. The success of the Coinbase listing has prompted Kraken and social trading platform eToro to double up on their ambitions to also make a public appearance. The twist since April, however, is that the crypto market has tumbled in price with Bitcoin dropping from $60,000 to $36,709.38 it is currently trading at according to CoinMarketCap.
Contrary to expectations, Dan said the market is favorable to Kraken despite the broad price corrections, a situation that influenced his positions about the listing plans.
“I would push back and say that the crypto markets are looking great right now,” said Held. “If you look at Kraken volume, alongside other exchange volume, we hit all-time highs a few weeks ago. Kraken had an $8-billion volume day, that’s an incredible amount of money traded.”
Kraken Direct Listing to Affirm the Health of US Markets
When Coinbase went public, its closing price on the first trading day was $328.28 per share, with a market capitalization of $85.5 billion. This figure positioned it as the most valuable trading platform in the world, albeit, for a short while. The performance of Coinbase suggests the health of the American stock market, however, this claim will be validated should the direct listing plan of Kraken attain a similar level of success.
In the global scene, Kraken is a major player, currently ranked as the fourth-largest digital currency exchange by trading volume, trailing Binance, Huobi Global, and Coinbase exchanges respectively. The push to go public, however, is primarily to secure a new set of strategic investors as the firm has a healthy balance sheet as Chief Executive Officer, Jesse Powell noted.
“We’re not in a rush to raise capital. The reason to do it would just be to bring on some strategic investors who can help us with geographic expansion and growth.”
Like Coinbase, Kraken’s business is also highly correlated with the performance of the broader market, investors will factor in as the firm moves forward with its plans.