Kraken boss signals IPO still in play despite reports of pause

Crypto exchange Kraken has hinted it is still going ahead with an initial public offering despite reports suggesting the plan was put on hold last month due to market conditions. 

Kraken filed for a confidential IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in November, but an unconfirmed report in March suggested that the plan may have been frozen. 

Speaking at the Semafor World Economy 2026 conference on Tuesday, Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi didn’t address the pause but confirmed the company had “confidentially filed” for an IPO when asked by Semafor reporter Rohan Goswami whether “there are plans to take Kraken public soon.”

“Is that news?” Goswami asked, to which Sethi responded: “I believe that’s news.”

Cointelegraph reached out to Kraken to confirm whether Kraken is actively pursuing the IPO or has pushed back the timeline, but did not receive an immediate response.

Sethi’s comments come as German financial markets platform Deutsche Börse Group invested $200 million in Kraken’s parent firm, Payward, in exchange for a 1.5% fully diluted stake on Tuesday.

The deal placed Kraken’s valuation at $13.3 billion, down from $20 billion in November.

Kraken told Cointelegraph that the Deutsche Börse Group investment seeks to bring crypto and TradFi closer together as a “single, cohesive infrastructure for institutional clients” rather than parallel systems.

Kraken’s IPO plans through a long-term lens

Speaking more broadly about going public at the Semafor conference, Sethi dismissed the idea that Kraken’s IPO may have been driven, or stalled by, policy developments in Washington.

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“If you live day by day, quarter by quarter, these things are meaningful,” Sethi said. But “if you're thinking about your company three, five, 10 or 20 years out, none of this is meaningful. It just doesn't matter.”