Morning Minute: Kraken Eyes 15% Stake in Aave at $385M Valuation

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GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors are mostly red down 1-5%, SOL leads; BTC at $59.5k
• Strategy’s STRC falls to $73 and new low; MSTR at $84
• Tether’s USDT flips ETH in FDV after ETH slide, now 2nd biggest token
• Kraken wants a 15% stake in Aave at $385M valuation
• Story Protocol rebrands as data network and pivots to AI Training

? Kraken Eyes a 15% Stake in Aave at a $385 Million Valuation

Kraken is in talks to buy a 15% stake in Aave at a $385 million valuation.

Kraken would invest 35,000 ETH(~$55M) in exchange for 250,000 AAVE tokens ($20M) and a 15% common equity stake in Aave Group, the company behind the protocol, a package worth roughly $71 million.

The move comes as Aave rebuilds from April’s KelpDAO exploit, which triggered billions of dollars in deposit withdrawals even though Aave’s own smart contracts were never compromised. For Kraken parent Payward, it’s a push to diversify ahead of a potential IPO.

The deal lands the same week Standard Chartered turned openly bullish on the AAVE token. Geoff Kendrick initiated coverage of AAVE with a price target implying nearly 50 times upside by the end of the decade, which would put it around $4,000 versus roughly $81 today, built on the bank’s thesis that tokenization and onchain credit drive enormous growth in DeFi lending. So in one week, you have a major bank betting on the token and a major exchange buying into the company.

Now here’s the problem, at least for token holders or prospective token buyers. Kraken’s deal values the Aave company at $385B, but the AAVE token trades at a roughly $1.24B market cap. That’s more than three times the equity valuation. In traditional finance, the company is where the value lives, since it owns the business and its cash flows. But of course crypto is an exception, and the deciphering token value vs company value has been a core theme of this past cycle.

With Aave, much of the protocol’s economics flow to the token, through the DAO treasury and the buyback program that uses protocol revenue to purchase AAVE, while the company largely builds and operates the software. So the market is effectively saying the token captures most of Aave’s value, or that the token is simply priced richer than the business underneath it. Kraken didn’t pick a side, taking both tokens and equity in the same deal. But for someone watching from the sidelines, it’s a bit difficult to buy a token trading at 3x+ the value of the underlying company.

We will see soon if the market corrects or is comfortable with the valuation discrepancy…

? BlackBerry Surges 20% as It Reinvents Into a Physical-AI Software Play

BlackBerry shares jumped nearly 20% on Thursday after an earnings beat and raised guidance, as the former phone maker leaned into its role in the physical-AI and robotics buildout. First-quarter revenue came in at $152.9 million, up 26% year over year and well above the roughly $138 million expected, with adjusted EBITDA up 144% and the company posting its first positive fiscal first-quarter cash flow in nine years.

The driver is QNX, BlackBerry’s embedded operating system, which grew 26% to $72.3 million. QNX is a deterministic, safety-certified real-time operating system already running in more than 275M vehicles. The same traits that make it reliable in cars make it valuable for robots and autonomous machines, where a software failure has physical consequences. Chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD already use it in smart cars and robots, and BlackBerry is positioning it as core infrastructure for software-defined vehicles, robotics, and industrial automation.

So the new pitch is that BlackBerry has quietly become a pick-and-shovel play on physical AI. The robots and autonomous systems need an operating system that never fails, and that’s where BlackBerry fits in with QNX. A QNX-commissioned survey found 89% of robotics developers see physical AI as critical to their strategy, and the stock’s move suggests Wall Street is starting to treat BlackBerry as an AI and robotics player…

? Macro Crypto and Markets

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were red; DOGE -3%, SHIB -5%, PEPE -6%, PENGU -2%, TRUMP even%, BONK -4%
• World (+50%), Jotchua (+40%) and SPCX69 (+58%) led movers on Solana
• Base movers included POD (+24%) and ICNT (+34%)

? Myriad Market of the Day

? Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

? What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 32 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.75 ETH, Pudgy +1% at 4.55 ETH; Hypurr’s +3% at 202 HYPE
• Funkari (+17%) and Captainz (+14%) led top movers