- Powerful investment fund takes serious interest in Kraken IPO.
- Kraken CEO shares his views and concerns on regulation.
Last month, there were talks that the U.S. based cryptocurrency exchange, Kraken, will go public in 2022. Kraken has the fourth largest trading volume of any cryptocurrency exchange in the world. According to reports, the CEO of Kraken, Jesse Powell, has expressed interest in a Kraken initial public offering. However, he is not willing to let his company go public for a cheap price. He said anything below $10 billion is too low. Currently, Kraken has a market capitalization of $4 billion dollars. So, it looks like there is a way to go before Powell will be ready to take the company public. Kraken’s rival, Coinbase, was valued at $100 billion last week when it had it’s IPO. There are talks that Kraken investors are working directly with the CEO to organize another round of fundraising to help bring the company’s worth to $20 billion.
RIT Capital interested in Kraken
Many powerful institutions have been keeping their eyes on these centralized exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase for a while. One in particular might surprise you – an investment fund founded by Lord Jacob Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family itself. The name of the investment fund is RIT Capital Partners. In a statement dated on April 12th, 2021, a representative from the investment fund wrote,
“If anyone listened in to the RIT Capital Webinar last month, they would have heard that within the private’s RIT has acquired an interest in Kraken.”
However, this is not the first blockchain or crypto company that the Rothschild ventured into. According to an article from privateequitywire.co, RIT was involved in an investment fund last year for Paxos, a regulated blockchain infrastructure platform.
Both Kraken and RIT have failed to comment anymore on the subject. However, Jesse Powell did speak to CNBC very recently and spoke about his concern of the coming wave of regulation within the United States. According to the report, Powell said,
“I think there could be some crackdown – something like that could really hurt crypto and kind of kill the original use case, which was to just make financial services accessible to everyone.”
“I hope that the U.S. and international regulators don’t take too much of a narrow view on this. Some other countries, China especially, are taking crypto very seriously and taking a very long-term view.”
Jesse Powell
However, in the interview by CNBC, Powell did leave some hope. He said,
“Maybe the genie’s out of the bottle and just trying to ban it at this point would make it more attractive. It would certainly send a message that the government sees this as a superior alternative to their own currency.“
Jesse Powell
Powell wants to keep crypto deregulated
So, Powell has shown a stark interest in keeping crypto as deregulated and as far away from institutional laws as possible. However, will his possible affiliation with the Rothshild venture firm RIT Capital Partners conflict with his mission of keeping the crypto space free and open? We don’t know what RIT Capital Firm’s philosophical views on cryptocurrencies and blockchain are. But if they’re owned by the Rothschild family, it’s likely their vision on the future of blockchain is not congenial with the everyday user’s.
Aaron is passionate about blockchain and has been an investor in cryptocurrencies for the past years. He enjoys engaging with other people in the cryptocurrency community online, particularly on Telegram, and learning from experts.
