PANews reported on January 27th that Republic Europe, the European arm of investment platform Republic, announced the launch of a special purpose vehicle (SPV) product focused on Kraken, enabling European retail investors to indirectly hold interests in the privately held cryptocurrency exchange. This move is described as a pioneering private market product for individual investors in Europe. The SPV will provide investors with indirect equity exposure to the US-based Kraken exchange. Investors participating in the SPV will indirectly hold Kraken equity and potentially benefit from its future performance.

Kraken secretly filed for an IPO in the US last November at a valuation of approximately $20 billion, and subsequently acquired tokenization company Backed Finance in December as part of its pre-IPO strategy.