Chainfeeds Summary:
The crypto industry is officially shifting from a funding-driven model to an era of compliant IPOs, with six major players, including Kraken, Consensys, and BitGo, gearing up for their IPOs.
Article source:
https://www.chaincatcher.com/article/2234944
Article Author:
DL News
Opinion:
DL News: US- crypto exchage Kraken is poised to become the largest digital asset IPO of 2026. The company secretly filed its S-1 document with the SEC in November 2025, aiming for a listing in the first half of 2026. Kraken doubled its revenue to $1.5 billion in 2024 and secured a valuation of approximately $20 billion in a late-stage funding round led by Citadel Securities. Unlike many of its peers, Kraken has long adhered to a compliance-first strategy, a choice that sacrificed some growth in the short term but has become a core competitive advantage in an increasingly stringent regulatory environment. The company has obtained a MiCA license in Europe and is accelerating the development of high-margin businesses such as derivatives. With its diversified revenue structure encompassing spot trading, staking, and NFTs, many analysts consider Kraken, besides Coinbase, the cleanest and most easily understood crypto IPO by traditional capital markets. In addition to exchanges, crypto infrastructure companies are becoming an important part of the IPO queue. Consensys is reportedly working with JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs on a mid-2026 IPO. The company, which operates MetaMask and Infura, is transforming from a software studio into a high-margin infrastructure provider. By 2025, MetaMask added native Bitcoin support, and its monthly active users exceeded 30 million, making Consensys one of the few publicly traded companies offering crypto exposure through a pure software model. Meanwhile, crypto custody provider BitGo is poised to become the first major custody service provider to go public. Its revenue has quadrupled in the past two years, primarily from institutional-grade custody and compliant staking services. For investors looking to participate in the growth of digital assets but unwilling to directly bear the risks of trading volatility, these compliant and secure infrastructure companies are becoming an important bridge connecting crypto and traditional finance. Outside the US, a new wave of crypto asset IPOs is also brewing in Asian markets. Animoca Brands, planning a Nasdaq listing in 2026 via a reverse merger, has built one of the industry's largest Web3 gaming portfolios and will focus its narrative on digital ownership by 2025. Meanwhile, hardware wallet maker Ledger is preparing for a major funding round in 2026, having sold over 6 million devices and transitioning to a full-stack self-hosting platform through Ledger Live. In South Korea, Bithumb, planning an IPO by the end of 2025, is seen as a key indicator of the country's crypto demand. South Korea has approximately 18 million crypto users, with retail trading activity consistently exceeding that of the stock market. As these companies enter the public market, the crypto industry is undergoing institutionalization along different paths: some relying on compliant trading, others on infrastructure, and still others on security and local market depth.
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