The crypto industry is experiencing the most aggressive public-market push in its history — and the results are brutal. In 2025, at least 11 crypto companies raised approximately $14.6 billion through initial public offerings, a 47x increase from 2024's $310 million across four listings. Circle, ...
"Crypto IPOs are getting boring, and that's the point." — PYMNTS.com
The crypto industry is experiencing the most aggressive public-market push in its history — and the results are brutal. In 2025, at least 11 crypto companies raised approximately $14.6 billion through initial public offerings, a 47x increase from 2024's $310 million across four listings. Circle, Bullish, Gemini, Figure, and BitGo all made the leap to public markets. But the post-IPO carnage tells a different story: Gemini trades at $5.90, down 79% from its $28 IPO price. BitGo sits at $10.76, down 40% from its $18 IPO price. Bullish has fallen from a $118 peak to $31. Circle, once valued near $18 billion, has shed two-thirds of its market cap.
Yet the pipeline isn't slowing. Today, Bloomberg reported that Hong Kong-based stablecoin payments firm RedotPay is weighing a $1 billion U.S. IPO at a $4 billion-plus valuation. Kraken has confidentially filed its S-1 and targets a first-half 2026 listing at a $20 billion valuation. Consensys is working with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs on a mid-2026 offering. Ledger, Animoca Brands, and CertiK are all in the queue. The question is no longer whether crypto companies can go public — it's whether public markets can absorb them.
2025 shattered every precedent for crypto public listings. Before Coinbase's 2021 direct listing, no major crypto-native firm had accessed U.S. equity markets. After years of regulatory limbo and a brutal 2022-2023 bear market, the dam broke.
The marquee listings of 2025:
| Company | Ticker | Exchange | IPO Price | Capital Raised | IPO Date | |---------|--------|----------|-----------|----------------|----------| | Circle (USDC) | CRCL | NYSE | $31/share | $624M | June 2025 | | Bullish | BLSH | NYSE | $37/share | $1.1B | August 2025 | | Gemini | GEMI | Nasdaq | $28/share | $425M | September 2025 | | Figure | FIGR | Nasdaq | $25/share | $787.5M | September 2025 | | BitGo | BTGO | NYSE | $18/share | $212.8M | January 2026 |
PitchBook reported the total at roughly $14.6 billion raised across 11 crypto listings globally — a 47x year-over-year increase from $310 million in 2024. The enabling conditions were clear: the SEC softened its enforcement-first posture, the GENIUS Act and market-structure bills moved through Congress, and institutional allocators gained comfort with a regulatory framework that finally seemed plausible.
But the quality of what listed matters more than the quantity. The 2025 cohort was overwhelmingly infrastructure — custody, stablecoins, exchanges, lending platforms. Not a single Layer 1 protocol, DeFi application, or token project went public. This wasn't crypto's dot-com IPO wave. It was its plumbing going public.
The first-day pops were euphoric. The aftermath has been devastating.
| Company | IPO Price | Day-1 Peak | Current Price (Feb 24) | Change from IPO | |---------|-----------|------------|------------------------|-----------------| | Circle (CRCL) | $31 | $298.99 | $60.35 | +95% from IPO, -80% from peak | | Bullish (BLSH) | $37 | $118.00 | ~$31.77 | -14% from IPO | | Gemini (GEMI) | $28 | $45.89 | $5.90 | -79% from IPO | | BitGo (BTGO) | $18 | $24.50 | $10.76 | -40% from IPO | | Figure (FIGR) | $25 | — | ~$30.22 | +21% from IPO |
Of the five major listings, only Circle and Figure trade above their IPO prices — and Circle has lost 80% from its first-day peak of nearly $299. Gemini's 79% decline is the worst, with the Winklevoss twins' exchange reporting a $159.5 million net loss in Q3 2025 that sent analysts scrambling to cut targets.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who watched 2021's SPAC wave: massive first-day retail demand, followed by months of selling as lock-up periods expire and operating reality sets in. The crypto bear market that saw Bitcoin fall from a $126,000 all-time high to below $63,000 — a 50% wipeout — made the correction significantly worse. Crypto stocks trade as leveraged beta to token prices, regardless of whether their revenue models depend on token appreciation.
Despite the post-IPO wreckage, the 2026 pipeline is the largest in crypto history. The companies preparing to list represent over $50 billion in combined private-market valuations:
Kraken — The San Francisco-based exchange filed a confidential S-1 in November 2025 after raising $800 million at a $20 billion valuation, with Citadel Securities among investors. Kraken is targeting a first-half 2026 listing. However, the company fired CFO Stephanie Lemmerman in February 2026 after just 16 months, replacing her with VP of Business Expansion Robert Moore — a move that raised governance questions at a critical moment.
Consensys — The MetaMask parent company and Ethereum infrastructure giant is reportedly working with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs on a mid-2026 IPO. With more than 30 million monthly MetaMask users and a $7 billion private valuation, Consensys offers the purest crypto-software exposure yet.
Ledger — The French hardware wallet manufacturer is targeting a U.S. listing at a valuation above $4 billion, triple its 2023 level. Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays are advising.
RedotPay — Today's Bloomberg report revealed the Hong Kong stablecoin payments firm is considering a New York IPO that could raise over $1 billion at a $4 billion-plus valuation. RedotPay claims 6 million users and $10 billion in annualized payment volume. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Jefferies are involved.
Animoca Brands — The Hong Kong-based Web3 gaming portfolio company plans to list on Nasdaq via a reverse merger with Currenc Group.
Grayscale Investments — The largest digital asset manager has filed for an IPO, seeking to convert its brand dominance in crypto fund management into public-market equity.
The sheer volume of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan involvement across these deals signals something important: Wall Street sees recurring advisory and underwriting fees in crypto IPOs regardless of secondary-market performance. The banks collect their 5-7% underwriting spread whether the stock doubles or halves.
The foundational challenge for crypto IPOs is the same one that plagues the broader industry: the gap between genuine economic value and subsidy-driven activity.
Consider the revenue profiles of the companies that have already listed:
Circle earns its revenue primarily from interest on the Treasury reserves backing USDC. With USDC's circulating supply at roughly $45 billion, Circle essentially operates as a money-market fund that pays zero yield to depositors. The business model is elegant — but entirely dependent on interest rates remaining elevated and USDC maintaining its market share against Tether and emerging competitors. The GENIUS Act's stablecoin licensing framework could either entrench Circle's position or open the door to bank-issued competitors.
Bullish and Gemini derive revenue from trading fees — a model that scales with volatility and volume but crashes during drawdowns. Gemini's $159.5 million Q3 loss illustrates how quickly exchange economics deteriorate when retail participation evaporates. Trading-fee revenue is inherently cyclical and commoditized.
BitGo provides custody services — one of the few genuine recurring-revenue models in crypto. Yet its $10.76 stock price suggests the market questions whether custody alone can justify a multi-billion-dollar valuation when competition from Coinbase Custody, Fireblocks, and traditional banks is intensifying.
Figure has outperformed because it sits at the intersection of blockchain and traditional lending — a business model with identifiable cash flows that public-market investors can underwrite using traditional financial models.
The economic lesson is clear: public markets are aggressively discounting any crypto company whose revenue depends on speculative trading volumes or token-price appreciation. The companies holding value are those with interest income, recurring software fees, or traditional financial-services revenue that happens to use blockchain rails.
The 2025-2026 crypto IPO wave is serving as a real-time stress test of what the market believes crypto infrastructure is actually worth. The results are instructive:
What gets rewarded: Stablecoin infrastructure (Circle's interest-income model), traditional-finance adjacency (Figure's lending), compliance-first positioning, recurring revenue.
What gets punished: Exchange-dependent revenue (Gemini, Bullish), hardware-only plays, companies whose growth narratives rely on the "next bull market," and any company that cannot explain its economics without referencing token prices.
The meta-narrative is that Wall Street is willing to fund crypto infrastructure — but only at a steep discount to private-market valuations. Kraken's $20 billion private valuation will be tested against Coinbase's current public-market multiple. Consensys's $7 billion tag will be measured against MetaMask's actual monetization rate. RedotPay's $4 billion ask will be benchmarked against traditional payment processors.
The irony is profound: an industry built on disintermediating Wall Street now depends on Wall Street's underwriters, analysts, and institutional investors to validate its worth. Every crypto company that goes public submits itself to the discipline of quarterly earnings, GAAP accounting, and public-market governance — the exact infrastructure of traditional finance that crypto was supposed to replace.
Record IPO volume meets brutal secondary performance. Eleven crypto IPOs raised ~$14.6 billion in 2025 — 47x the 2024 total — but most now trade significantly below their IPO prices or first-day peaks.
The 2026 pipeline exceeds $50 billion in private valuations. Kraken ($20B), Consensys ($7B), Ledger ($4B+), RedotPay ($4B+), Chainalysis ($4.5B), and Grayscale are all in various stages of preparation.
Infrastructure, not speculation, is what lists. Every 2025-2026 crypto IPO is a custody, exchange, payments, or software company. Zero DeFi protocols or L1 chains have attempted public listings.
Revenue quality determines survival. Circle and Figure outperform because they generate interest income and lending revenue. Gemini and BitGo suffer because trading and custody revenue is cyclical and commoditized.
Wall Street is the biggest winner. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Jefferies, and Barclays collect 5-7% underwriting fees regardless of secondary-market performance, creating a sustainable revenue stream from crypto's public-market ambitions.
The crypto IPO wave of 2025-2026 represents the industry's most significant capitulation to traditional finance. Not capitulation in price — but in structure, governance, and self-conception. Every company that files an S-1 is implicitly admitting that public-market validation matters more than decentralized ideology. Every founder who hires Goldman Sachs is acknowledging that the "plumbing" of Wall Street is, ultimately, the plumbing crypto needs too.
The market is efficiently sorting winners from losers. Companies with genuine economic value — interest income, recurring fees, identifiable cash flows — are holding. Companies whose stories depend on the next speculative cycle are being destroyed. For investors and industry participants, the message is unambiguous: in public markets, revenue is the only narrative that survives.
The question for the $50+ billion in valuations waiting to list in 2026 is whether they've internalized this lesson — or whether they're about to learn it the hard way.