From Circle to Bullish: Crypto Completes ‘Bellwether Year’ for IPOs

This year may have been the biggest and most consequential year ever for crypto IPOs.

A surge in retail interest, renewed political support and a reopened US IPO market helped push a wave of crypto companies onto public exchanges. Reuters described a “rush for IPOs on Wall Street” driven by the resurgence of cryptocurrencies this year Barrons reported that crypto IPOs “ran Wall Street wild.”

Against that backdrop, companies from exchanges to stablecoin issuers rushed to tap the public markets, setting the stage for an unusually busy IPO calendar.

For a long time, the industry’s only major IPO win was Coinbase’s Nasdaq debut in 2021. The ensuing years were filled with crypto companies trying (but not always succeeding) to go public via SPAC, or special purpose acquisition companies. A SPAC is a publicly traded shell company that raises money from investors and then merges with a private company to take it public without a traditional initial public offering.

Two notable IPOs in 2025, USDC issuer Circle and crypto exchange Bullish, were preceded by such attempts.

Circle first attempted to go public in 2021 through a merger with Concord Acquisition Corp. The deal would have valued the company at up to $9 billion, but was terminated at the end of 2022 after repeated delays and changing market conditions.

When Circle finally debuted on the New York Stock Exchange this year, it was so popular with investors that the NYSE halted trading three times within the first hour. But the company has seen its momentum slow as the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates and investors fear this will impact the interest earned on the cash reserves backing USDC stablecoins.

“I see the Circle IPO as a bellwether for the IPO markets this year,” Lynn Martin, president of the New York Stock Exchange, said at the time, “not just for crypto listings.”

Bullish also saw its share price skyrocket when it went public in August. The crypto exchange has a SPAC backstory similar to Circle’s. The company announced it would go public in 2021, but canceled the deal in late 2022, citing “time constraints and market conditions.”

Trading platform eToro, not strictly a crypto company, saw its valuation rise to $5.4 billion after its Nasdaq debut in May. The company had scaled back its crypto offerings after a 2024 settlement with the SEC. But at the time of writing, it now lists 82 different crypto assets.

However, not every company that explored an IPO this year crossed the finish line. Crypto prime brokerage FalconX is rumored to be considering an IPO, unnamed sources said Declutter. But as the year draws to a close, there has been no official acknowledgment of these plans and no paperwork has been filed with the SEC.

Kraken, meanwhile, filed for an initial public offering after closing on an $800 million raise in November. The crypto exchange is now valued at $20 billion. The company has already indicated that it wants its shares to start trading soon, saying it plans to make its debut as soon as the SEC completes its review process and depending on market conditions.

There are others making their way to the starting line. BitGo, Grayscale, Blockchain.com and others were exploring or openly discussing IPO plans as market conditions improved.

If 2025 marks the sector’s return to the public markets, it could also have set the stage for an even larger class of crypto IPOs in the coming year.