SkyBridge Capital – the money management firm that’s run by Anthony Scaramucci, who was briefly a White House communications director under then-President Donald Trump – is privately offering investors the chance to invest in Kraken as the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange plans to go public next year.
In an email to investors, SkyBridge said it is purchasing preferred stock from an early investor on behalf of its funds and clients “in one of our largest private market investments to date.”
“We believe we have secured an attractive valuation (approximately $10.5 billion relative to the reported $10 billion valuation from the company’s last round over seven months ago),” according to the email, which was seen by CoinDesk.
The terms for investment state that qualified purchasers must have a minimum investment of $250,000 and there will be a 4% upfront purchase fee, 20% incentive fee and 8% hurdle upon exit.
A SkyBridge press official declined to comment.
Kraken has 9 million customers worldwide and facilitates over $1.6 billion in spot trading volume per day, according to the email.
SkyBridge’s plan comes as Kraken has signaled it’s moving forward with a plan to go public in 2022, following rival Coinbase’s successful direct stock listing earlier this year. Coinbase has a market capitalization of $68 billion, according to Google Finance.
Bloomberg reported in February that Kraken was in talks to raise new capital at a $10 billion valuation.
In May, Dan Held, director of growth marketing at Kraken, told CoinDesk that “everything seems to still be on track for a direct listing sometime in 2022.”
Kraken CEO Jesse Powell told Fortune magazine in June that the company might go public via an initial public stock offering instead of a direct listing.
A Kraken spokesperson declined to comment.
