FX.co ★ Kraken to go public in 12-18 months

Kraken, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is set to go public in 12-18 months.

Its CEO, Jesse Powell, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV that the firm is "doing all the preliminary work" to become a public company, but refused to give a target forecast. He said their mission is to bring cryptocurrency to the world, so they pin their hopes that their forecast will be a reflection of their success in the mission.

Kraken was recently in talks to raise new funding that would have valued it at more than $ 10 billion to $ 20 billion. Tribe Capital co-founder and partner Arjun Sethi recently joined Kraken's board of directors as a sign of his forward-looking ambitions.

Currently, Kraken has over 6 million registered clients in 190 countries around the world, making it the 4th largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of trading volume. Its main competitor is Coinbase Global, which already went public earlier this year through direct listing.

Powell said Kraken has registered the most new users this year compared to other previous years, with new customers surpassing all of 2020 in the first two months. Yet, trading volume fell slightly, after the bitcoin sell-off in May. He blamed "swing traders" on this, or newcomers to the market.

In any case, Powell remains optimistic about Bitcoin and predicts that the token may reach a new all-time high this year.

Powell also added: "I said one bitcoin, one Lambo by the end of the year. At the moment it could be a Lambo with fewer options or a smaller engine, but I think we are still looking at significantly higher targets." He is referring to the Lamborghini sports cars that are popular with crypto investors.