coindesk.com
KRAKacquisition Corp, a new special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) sponsored by an affiliate of crypto exchange Kraken, filed to go public with a $250 million IPO.
The blank-check company, registered in the Cayman Islands, said it plans to offer 25 million units at $10 each. Each unit will include one Class A ordinary share and a fraction of a warrant to buy more.
If approved, KRAKacquisition will trade under the ticker “KRAQU” on the Nasdaq Global Market. Spanish banking giant Santander is listed as the sole book-running manager.
While the company hasn’t chosen a target, the SPAC is expected to focus on businesses in the cryptocurrency industry. The offering gives Kraken a new route to bring such companies into public markets, while potentially bolstering its own stack of crypto infrastructure services.
KRAKaquision's name hints at a link between the SPAC and Kraken’s own payments solution, Krak.
Kraken has itself been moving toward an IPO after it raising $500 million in a funding round that valued it at $15 billion back in September. In December, it acquired tokenization specialist Backed Finance.
The filing follows the footsteps of a cryptocurrency IPO wave last year that saw various crypto-linked firms go public. These include CoinDesk’s parent company Bullish, whose shares have risen 8% since the IPO, stablecoin issuer Circle Internet, up 167% and crypto exchange Gemini Space Station, which has dropped 10% since it first started trading.
Crypto custody provider BitGo is also looking to IPO this year.