Cryptocurrency exchange Bakkt to IPO at $2.1B

Crypto marketplace Bakkt has confirmed it will soon trade publicly on the New York Stock Exchange.

Bakkt will merge with a blank check company owned by VC Victory Park Capital in a bid to IPO quickly (and without requiring SEC due diligence from the get go).

Bakkt said the deal values it at $2.1 billion, which would make the Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary around the same size as semiconductor stock Xperi.

Depiction of @BarrySilbert and other @Grayscale employees looking at the Bakkt valuation and trying to guess what price @coinbase will pop to when it goes public. pic.twitter.com/UwSWN95o8i
— fineartcrypto (@fineartcrypto) January 11, 2021

Messari said Coinbase — much bigger than Bakkt — could be worth as much as $28 billion.

But the move also places Bakkt alongside a raft of crypto exchanges expressing intent to sell shares to retail investors.

Crypto-friendly Robinhood is prepping to list shares on the NYSE at $20 billion.
Coinbase filed in December a request with the SEC to go public — but there’s no official word on when its IPO will be.
Social trading platform eToro followed suit almost straight away, declaring plans for a $5 billion IPO in the US sometime in Q2.

The wave of crypto exchange IPOs mirrors a steady stream of Bitcoin mining operations and blockchain-adjacent companies that’ve gone public in the past few years.

And while exchanges are likely to fare better than the average crypto penny stock, the rise of industry-specific IPOs is starting to echo the ICO bubble — which saw thousands of tokens listed only to crash once the bears took hold.