Germany just bought the Kraken IPO a front-row seat

A month ago, Kraken’s IPO was dead. Well, “shelved.” The polite word companies use when they’ve filed the S-1, booked the bankers, told the staff, and then watched bitcoin roll over and take their valuation with it. Kraken filed confidentially back in November at a $20 billion valuation. By March they’d put it on ice. BitGo had just IPO’d and the stock was down 44%. Bullish, stock price down. Gemini, stock price down. Coinbase, stock price down. Nowhere on the stock market was a crypto exchange safe. Down, down, down.[1] Then on the same day this week, two things landed together, and as I’ve said before, in crypto I don’t believe in coincidences...[2] [3] Deutsche Börse, the company that runs the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, invested $200 million into Kraken’s parent company Payward. Shortly thereafter, Kraken’s co-CEO Arjun Sethi walked onto a stage in Washington and confirmed the IPO is back on. Now, before anyone gets too misty-eyed about this, let’s look at the actual numbers… 🚨Heads up! It’s not the publicly traded tech giant you might expect… Meet $MODE, the disruptor turning phones into potential income generators. Retail investors are buzzing about the company’s pre-IPO offering. 📲Mode saw 32,481% revenue growth over a three year period, ranking them the #1 overall software company on Deloitte’s 2023 fastest-growing companies list. They aim to pioneer “Privatized Universal Basic Income“ powered by technology—not government. Their flagship product, EarnPhone, turns phones from an expense into an income stream, and they’ve already helped consumers earn & save $1B+. Uber did it to taxis, Airbnb to hotels and now Mode Mobile is doing it to the $500 billion smartphone industry. The difference? Early investors like you can invest in their pre-IPO offering at just $0.50/share and earn up to 20% bonus. 59,000+ shareholders already invested $71M+ and they may soon reach a point where they no longer accept outside investment. 🔒 With their Nasdaq ticker $MODE secured, investors now have a limited time to invest before they potentially go public.* Early investors can earn up to 20% bonus shares. Deutsche Börse bought a 1.5% stake. That implies a valuation of around $13.3 billion. Kraken’s November round priced it at $20 billion. That’s a 33% haircut in about five months, which roughly tracks what bitcoin did (and every other major crypto exchange) over the same period. So, this isn’t a vote of confidence at a premium. It’s a wily old European exchange operator strolling in during crypto’s worst few months and picking up a cracking company at a discount. Advantage, the old guard. Deutsche Börse has clearly been manoeuvring for a while now to get into crypto and tokenised assets. They own Clearstream, one of the world’s largest settlement houses, with €19 trillion in assets under custody. They bought Crypto Finance, a Swiss-regulated digital asset firm. They rolled out crypto custody for institutional clients last year. They partnered with Kraken in December on trading, settlement, collateral, tokenized assets, the lot. Writing a $200 million cheque is the logical next step. You don’t want a partner that can get bought out by someone else halfway through building the infrastructure you need. Kraken is now targeting a Q3 listing. I’d say it’s cautiously optimistic here. It does feel like the market’s recovering. And don’t forget Kraken recently got Fedwire access through a Federal Reserve master account, and it now has an institutional backer so they can say “we have big dog investors now” on the roadshow. If Kraken lists, it’ll be the first US crypto-native exchange to go public since Coinbase in 2021, five years on from when that window last opened for the real crypto guys. And unlike Coinbase, Kraken has a cleaner regulatory record. But the reason I care about this isn’t really about Kraken, albeit I think it’s a wonderful company. The point here is that while everyone has felt like crypto is a bit like Death Valley, big money is still moving into the quality players. With Frankfurt buying in, the IPO back on, bitcoin above $74,000, and ETF flows are picking up, it certainly looks to me like the early stages of a cycle recovery and “moon” higher. This is all usually what the shape of the turn looks like. Not a lot of fanfare, just several pieces of the puzzle coming together to tell us… Crypto is back! Trust in crypto, Adam Atlantic [1]https://unchainedcrypto.com/kraken-pauses-ipo-plans-amid-weak-market-conditions/ [2]https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/14/crypto-exchange-kraken-confirms-it-has-confidentially-filed-for-an-ipo.html [3]https://www.deutsche-boerse.com/dbg-en/media/news-stories/press-releases/Deutsche-B-rse-Group-Acquires-a-Stake-in-Kraken-for-200-Million-5077740 *Disclaimer Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A+ Offering. Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur. The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.