Bullish is returning to the IPO fray, and this time around, the Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange is targeting a $4.23 billion valuation as it prepares for its U.S. stock market listing.
In its most recent SEC filing, the company reaffirmed it would raise as much as $629.3 million by selling 20.3 million shares at $28 to $31 apiece. If everything goes according to plan, Bullish will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “BLSH.”
This IPO is Bullish’s second shot at going public following a prior contemplated $9 billion SPAC deal that was canceled in 2022 amid regulatory hiccups. With regulatory tailwinds now in its favor, partially driven by the Trump administration’s GENIUS Act providing early-stage certainty for stablecoins, Bullish is taking advantage to now enter the public markets.
Bullish is no ordinary exchange. Led by CEO Thomas Farley, the former NYSE president, the platform primarily caters to institutional crypto traders. On top of that, it also owns crypto media outlet CoinDesk, which it acquired from Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group in 2023.
The valuation goal this time is more modest, a 52% reduction from 2021’s lofty goals. But analysts such as Renaissance Capital’s Matt Kennedy say that’s by design. “Bankers prefer to under-shoot and price up rather than over-shoot and fall back,” he said.
One fascinating twist in the IPO plan? Bullish’s ambitious plans to turn a significant portion of its proceeds into U.S.-dollar stablecoins. The firm stated that it would partner with one or more stablecoin issuers to achieve this. With stablecoin-specialist firms such as Circle Internet already displaying impressive IPO returns, Circle now trades at more than 400% of its IPO price, it is obvious Bullish wishes to catch the same wave of investor optimism.
But it’s not all green candles. The crypto exchange lost $349 million in Q1 2025 versus a $105 million profit in the equivalent quarter last year. That steep drop is largely due to a decrease in the fair value of its holdings of crypto assets. It’s a theme that’s been repeated, you could call it a regular occurrence, just last week Coinbase posted a decline in profit due to declining trading volumes, which dropped its shares by almost 17%.
But experts such as Kennedy point out that astute investors are learning to overcome crypto market fluctuations and instead evaluate such firms on their underlying operational performance. For Bullish, that implies demonstrating strong fundamentals as a trading platform, rather than merely as a repository of fluctuating assets.
With Citigroup, Jefferies, and J.P. Morgan underwriting the deal, and institutional demand warming up once more, everyone is waiting to see if Bullish can deliver a solid performance this time around. If timing is everything and sentiment is favorable, this could prove to be one of the most discussed IPOs of the year in the crypto space.
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