In what amounts to another litmus test for Wall Street’s evolving relationship with digital assets, cryptocurrency exchange Bullish is charging toward a nearly $1 billion initial public offering—a figure that would have seemed fantastical just a few years ago when most traditional financial institutions treated crypto with the enthusiasm typically reserved for root canals.
The company plans to offer 30 million shares priced between $32 and $33 each, targeting a market capitalization of approximately $4.8 billion. This represents a 60% increase from Bullish’s initial valuation projections near $4.23 billion—because apparently, in today’s frothy markets, why settle for merely ambitious when you can aim for audacious?
What lends this offering particular gravitas is the institutional firepower backing it. JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Jefferies are handling underwriting duties, while heavyweights like BlackRock and ARK Invest have demonstrated significant interest. The roster of individual backers reads like a who’s who of billionaire crypto evangelists: Peter Thiel, Alan Howard, and Mike Novogratz, with additional support from Japanese banking giant Nomura.
When Wall Street titans and crypto billionaires unite behind a single venture, even the most skeptical observers take notice.
Bullish emerged in 2021 from Block.one’s $10 billion capital pool (one does wonder what constitutes a small side project in that ecosystem). The firm has strategically secured licenses across Germany, Hong Kong, and Gibraltar, positioning itself to capture both Western and Asian institutional flows—a geographic diversification strategy that would make any multinational corporation envious. The platform integrates an automated market maker with a central limit order book to enhance liquidity for institutional traders. This approach helps minimize slippage during volatile trading periods by maintaining deeper pool depth for institutional-sized transactions.
The timing appears fortuitous. Recent crypto IPOs have generated substantial post-listing gains, with stablecoin issuer Circle’s stock surging over 500% shortly after its debut. Meanwhile, Kraken and Grayscale are preparing their own public market forays, suggesting institutional appetite for regulated crypto infrastructure has reached something approaching genuine enthusiasm rather than grudging tolerance. Bullish previously attempted to go public through SPAC Far Peak in 2021 but the merger collapsed in late 2022 due to regulatory hurdles.
Bullish’s acquisition of CoinDesk adds an intriguing dimension, creating synergies between media content and trading services that could prove valuable in an industry where information asymmetry often determines winners and losers.
The company will trade under ticker “BLSH” on the New York Stock Exchange, joining the growing cohort of crypto-native firms testing whether traditional equity markets can properly value digital asset businesses—a question whose answer remains delightfully uncertain.
