What to Know:
- Kraken is delaying its IPO, avoiding market FOMO, and aiming for long-term stability.
- The exchange is pursuing selective acquisitions like Breakout and NinjaTrade to expand services.
- Kraken is growing institutional offerings with custody and prime brokerage services while maintaining profitability.
Kraken is taking a cautious approach toward going public, emphasizing strategic growth and acquisitions over rushing into an IPO. The company’s co-CEO, Arjun Sethi, stressed that Kraken will chart its own path rather than following competitors like Bullish and Gemini, who went public on the NYSE and Nasdaq earlier this year.
Caution Over IPO FOMO
“It’s your capital, it’s your asset, it’s your sovereign right,” said co-CEO Arjun Sethi on Fortune Crypto’s Crypto Playbook vodcast, discussing tokenization. This statement underlines Kraken’s philosophy of safeguarding user assets while carefully considering its next big steps.
While speculation earlier this year suggested an IPO as early as the first quarter of 2026, Sethi clarified that Kraken is not acting under market pressure. “We won’t act hastily due to FOMO sentiment,” he said. The company’s decision reflects a broader strategy of measured expansion, focusing on long-term sustainability rather than immediate headlines.
Leadership Changes
Last week, news came out that Kraken lost a number of executives while. Reports say that these changes are part of a larger effort to reorganize the company internally in order to improve financial management and leadership alignment before going public.
David Olsson, the global head of institutional sales; Shannon Kurtas, the head of exchanges and VP of product and the Pro service; Jeff K, the director of OTC trading; and Sanjay K, the OTC trading lead for the Americas are all people who have left. These departures have made people wonder about how things work inside Kraken, but the company hasn’t said anything official about them.
Strategic Acquisitions
Kraken is actively looking for mergers and acquisitions to make its position in the crypto market stronger. The exchange has bought companies like Breakout and NinjaTrade in the last few months. These deals fit in with its larger development strategy. Sethi stressed that Kraken is not “casting a wide net” but instead looking for acquisitions that will improve its services and offerings to institutions.
In May, he said that the company’s plans for an IPO depend on clear rules from regulators that make sure any public move follows current financial rules. The platform is also still coming up with new services. Kraken launched an IPO-style token offering last week to attract institutional investors and diversify its sources of income.
Market Impact and New Offerings
Kraken also plans to grow by adding custody and prime brokerage services. The company aims for institutional investors to contribute roughly one-third of revenue, with retail and mid-market traders accounting for the remainder. Kraken wants to build trust in a market where trust is very important by offering institutional players safe, regulated services.
Kraken has also been working hard to grow its portfolio of assets. Reports says that the platform recently added USDH and HYPE tokens to give its more than 15 million users both stability and new ideas. These changes help investors who don’t want to take risks by using stablecoins, and they also give utility tokens to people who want to invest in decentralized ecosystems that are growing.
Analysts say that Kraken’s strict vetting of new tokens makes the market more confident and shows that new crypto projects are real. This method fits with what is happening in the crypto world as a whole, where tokens that exchanges support tend to be used by more people.
Conclusion
Kraken is still profitable and its value was said to be $15 billion before it bought NinjaTrader in March 2025. Kraken is setting itself up for long-term success instead of short-term market gains by delaying its IPO, focusing on strategic acquisitions, and adding services for both retail and institutional clients.
Kraken’s careful approach shows that it cares about the safety and freedom of its users while carefully growing its business in a crypto world that is always changing.
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