Sophia’s Thoughts On The Crypto IPO Wave
The surge of crypto IPOs in 2025, from Circle and Bullish to Galaxy, marks crypto’s Wall Street moment. What lies ahead for the space?
These are Sophia's Thoughts:
A wave of crypto IPOs brought billions to market and opened the door for mainstream investor access.
Public listings established crypto firms on major U.S. exchanges, including stablecoin issuers, exchanges, asset managers, and wallets.
Grayscale, BitGo, Kraken, Consensys, Fireblocks, and Chainalysis have filed or are preparing IPOs for late 2025 and 2026.
🚀 Last week’s market performance
The crypto market slipped 0.6% this week, with Bitcoin (BTC) down 2.1% amid softer sentiment. OKB (OKB) was the standout, soaring 162.3% after a major token burn boosted scarcity and security. On the other end, Maker (MKR) fell 14.6% as investors rotated out of DeFi assets.
🧐 What is your crypto mood today?
In each Sophia's Thoughts newsletter, we ask about your crypto mood. Your response to this question helps Sophia get a better sense of the pulse of crypto markets. And this ultimately translates into better insights for you when combined with Sophia's AI models. Your data empowers Sophia to provide you with even better intelligence going forward!
🌊 The Crypto IPO Wave
2025 has been the busiest year for crypto IPOs since Coinbase’s 2021 debut, marking a turning point in how digital asset companies interact with Wall Street. Circle kicked things off in June with a blockbuster NYSE listing, raising USD 1 billion at a USD 7.2B valuation. The deal was oversubscribed 25x and shares soared more than 700% before retracing. Circle still sits at USD 38B today, a clear sign of the market’s hunger for exposure to stablecoins.
Bullish followed in August with a USD 1.15B raise at a USD 5.4B valuation, making history as the first IPO fully settled in stablecoins (USDC, RLUSD, PYUSD) across Solana rails. Shares nearly doubled on debut, pushing its market cap close to USD 10B. That settlement mechanism may prove as important as the raise itself, offering a proof of concept for blockchain-based settlement at scale.
The listings didn’t stop there. Galaxy Digital successfully uplisted from Toronto to Nasdaq in May, raising USD 600M, while eToro tapped retail enthusiasm with a USD 620M raise and a strong debut pop. Exodus, the non-custodial wallet, took a quieter path, uplisting to NYSE American with a sub-USD 1B cap, but still showed that smaller crypto firms can find their way into public markets.
And the pipeline is heating up. Gemini’s filing revealed big losses of USD 282M in H1 but also USD 12B in assets under custody and a USD 75M Ripple-backed credit line. Figure Technologies, by contrast, reported USD 191M in revenue and USD 29M profit in H1, highlighting a different story: blockchain lenders proving profitable at scale.
💹 Legitimacy and Market Impact
Circle’s IPO surge, Bullish’s stablecoin-based settlement, and Galaxy Digital’s uplist show that multiple crypto firms have completed successful listings on major U.S. exchanges in 2025. These events mark a shift in how digital asset companies access capital markets, moving from private fundraising and SPACs toward traditional IPOs. Regulators have allowed these listings to proceed, and investors have provided significant demand, with day-one trading volumes and valuations exceeding initial expectations.
Performance has been striking but uneven. Circle’s 700% pop was the biggest in decades, but it retraced quickly, raising questions about overvaluation. Bullish’s stablecoin settlement was a practical breakthrough, slashing costs and timelines compared to legacy IPO settlement, and may pave the way for blockchain rails to underpin future equity and bond markets. Galaxy and eToro tapped into institutional and retail flows, while Exodus showed how smaller players can still find niches in the market.
Stablecoin issuers, exchanges, and blockchain infrastructure firms have joined major U.S. exchanges through IPOs and uplistings in 2025. Some of these companies have reported profitability, while others continue to operate at a loss. Policy developments such as the GENIUS Act advancing in Congress, along with Coinbase inclusion in the S&P 500 and MicroStrategy’s addition to the Nasdaq 100, have increased the presence of digital asset companies in widely followed market indices.
The market impact is already visible, wherein certain sectors are outperforming dramatically. Ethereum, home to half of all stablecoins (recently moved 100%+ to over USD 4000), and Solana, the backbone of Bullish’s settlement, have both benefited from investor attention. The flows seem to be concentrating power in a handful of players and chains, leaving smaller tokens at risk of being sidelined in a “winner-takes-most” environment.
🪈 The Pipeline & Risks
The pipeline for late 2025 into 2026 could reshape the sector all over again. Grayscale is preparing to go public with its USD 33B AUM, BitGo has filed to go public with over USD 100B in assets under custody, and Kraken, fresh off raising USD 500M at a USD 15B valuation, is eyeing a listing as early as next year. Consensys, Fireblocks, and Chainalysis round out the list of names with IPO-ready profiles. If even a handful of these firms make it to market, crypto IPOs could add trillions in public market capitalization within the next 18 months.
But this boom isn’t risk-free. A sharp drawdown in Bitcoin or Ethereum could close the IPO window as quickly as it opened, something we saw in 2022’s SPAC failures. Regulatory friction remains despite tailwinds like the GENIUS Act, with ongoing SEC lawsuits against Consensys and Gemini’s Earn program casting shadows. And operational fragility is a recurring theme: Gemini’s mounting losses, leadership volatility at Figure, and the billions lost in crypto hacks this year all remind investors that public scrutiny won’t erase crypto’s growing pains.
At the same time, the broader macro backdrop is supportive. Bitcoin is holding comfortably above USD 100K, with some analysts eyeing USD 200K into year-end. Tokenized assets like Figure’s HELOCs hint at trillions in traditional financial products moving on-chain. Institutional adoption, from BlackRock’s ETFs to Visa and PayPal integrating crypto rails, continues to accelerate.
The opportunity is enormous, but so are the stakes. 2025’s IPO wave is crypto’s “Wall Street moment,” cementing legitimacy while testing whether these firms can handle the transparency and volatility of public markets. The winners will define the next phase of crypto’s integration with global finance.
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