Kraken is about to IPO, how to seize this opportunity?

On July 30, the encryption trading platform Kraken was reported to be seeking to raise about $500 million at a valuation of $15 billion, attracting significant attention from the market. This news coincided with a gradual warming of the regulatory environment in the United States: in March 2025, the SEC officially withdrew its allegations of securities violations against Kraken, and just last week, Fortune magazine revealed that the FBI had also concluded its investigation into Kraken's founders, allowing Kraken to escape multiple regulatory shadows. Meanwhile, Kraken's official social media has frequently hinted at potential listing plans, further stimulating market imagination.

Previously, after CRCL completed its IPO in June, its maximum increase once reached as high as 10 times, providing a strong contrast to market expectations. If Kraken successfully goes public, it may trigger another wave of emotional highs - it is worth following: which targets will become the "hype leaders" in this feast?

The Pre-IPO investment craze is coming, and retail investors can also rush to the market before listing.

As top companies like OpenAI and SpaceX remain privatized for a long time, a large number of original employees and early investors wish to cash out their equity before going public. Forge is precisely the trading market that connects those who "want to sell" and investors who "want to buy early." Now that the listing expectations for Kraken have heated up, if its employees or institutions start selling their equity, private equity trading platforms like Forge may become an indirect entry point for retail investors to place their bets.

On the Forge platform, investors can typically purchase shares of unlisted companies in two ways: the first is through direct trading, where you find a holder willing to sell Kraken equity and negotiate a price with them. Forge will assist in completing the KYC, due diligence, and contract signing processes. The second method is through SPV trading (Forge Funds), where Forge establishes a dedicated special purpose vehicle (SPV) to pool buyer funds and collectively purchase equity in the target company. What you hold is a share of the SPV rather than the company's stock itself. This method circumvents the ROFR and is more suitable for investors looking to enter quickly, potentially completing the transaction within a few days. Once Kraken truly goes public, the SPV is also expected to gain liquidity for cashing out.

The current price on the Forge platform is $36.13, with a growth rate of up to 200% within a year, reflecting the market's enthusiasm for the listing of Kraken. The valuation is around $10 billion, and if Kraken can successfully list with a valuation of $15 billion, current entrants may gain more than 50% excess returns.

In addition, the tokenization of private equity is also bringing new investment opportunities to retail investors, with platforms such as Republic and Robinhood already supporting tech companies like OpenAI and SpaceX. Whether they will also support Kraken in the future is also worth following.

###, benchmarked against Coinbase's Base chain, Ink has become the core of the next round of L2 narrative.

After Coinbase launched the Base chain as the traffic hub of the Layer 2 sector, Kraken has officially entered the fray, firing the first shot in its Layer 2 strategy with the Ink network. Ink is a Layer 2 blockchain built on the Ethereum OP Stack, focusing on high throughput, low latency, and native compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It aims to become the DeFi hub on the Superchain, providing a solid underlying support for future transactions, payments, and on-chain financial infrastructure. The network is spearheaded by Kraken, and its native token $INK will be issued by its subsidiary, the Ink Foundation, and distributed to eligible active users and ecosystem participants through an airdrop program on the Kraken trading platform. Although specific distribution standards and timelines have not yet been announced, this news has already become the focus of the market.

On June 17, the Ink Foundation announced that the total supply of $INK will be permanently capped at 1 billion tokens, with no additional issuance and no governance rights, solely used for ecological incentives and user-level applications, positioning it more as a "fuel" attribute rather than a traditional governance token. The first clear application scenario is the native liquidity protocol powered by Aave, which is a key component in Ink's advancement of the on-chain capital stack. This protocol will natively integrate lending mechanisms onto 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 the Kraken product ecosystem, driving a strategic migration from centralized platforms to on-chain financial systems. The board of the Ink Foundation referred to this as "a pivotal moment," believing that the launch of Ink marks the beginning of the convergence between CeFi and DeFi, and is a substantial step towards the vision of a unified global capital market.

With the mainnet officially launched, Ink's ecosystem is taking shape. The platform has opened the memecoin launch tool Inkypump, and the first mascot token $ANITA once surged to a market value of 8 million dollars, currently stabilizing around 4 million dollars. Although the TGE of $INK has not been announced yet, driven by successful cases of projects like Base and other L2 projects, the market has strong expectations for the potential of Ink.

Considering the rapid rise of the Base chain in terms of ecological activity, TVL, and the number of projects, along with the performance of ecological tokens such as $VIRTUAL and $ZORA built around it, Ink, which has the direct endorsement of the Kraken team and will inherently attract traffic and resources, undoubtedly has the potential to become the next popular L2 mainline. It can be anticipated that once $INK starts circulating and opens for trading in the future, it will certainly become one of the "orthodox" representatives under the CeFi hype narrative, especially against the backdrop of Kraken's intention to deeply bind its trading capabilities with on-chain scenarios. Ink is not just an L2; it is more likely to become the on-chain strategic core of Kraken. For investors looking to position themselves ahead of the Kraken IPO and the next wave of L2 hotspots, Ink and its ecological targets are worth paying close attention to.

summary

In addition to encryption trading and Layer 2 network construction, Kraken has also been actively expanding its broader financial landscape. In 2025, Kraken acquired the leading U.S. retail futures trading platform Ninja Trader for $1.5 billion, obtaining futures commission merchant qualifications and officially entering the derivatives market regulated by the CFTC, establishing a key channel between CeFi and TradFi. Meanwhile, Kraken launched the payment application Krak, supporting real-time reward transfers for over 300 types of encryption and fiat assets, with plans to expand into lending and credit card services in the future, creating a comprehensive encryption payment experience. This series of initiatives not only lays the foundation for Kraken to build a super financial platform but is also seen as an important prelude to its long-anticipated IPO plan. With product line expansion, revenue growth, and continuous improvement in the regulatory environment, Kraken is increasingly accelerating its steps toward going public.