Bankless: Will Trump’s takeover trigger a craze for IPOs in crypto companies?

Author: Jack Inabinet,Bankless

Source: Bankless official website

Translated by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

After more than a decade of regulatory uncertainty and four years of turmoil in the Biden administration, the cryptocurrency’s IPO window has opened thanks to the inauguration of the first U.S. president to support cryptocurrencies!

It is rumored that several large cryptocurrency companies are preparing to make public appearances. Will this eventually become the moment when cryptocurrencies take over Wall Street? Here are the top five competitors for the 2025 IPO we are focusing on.

Gemini

Founded in 2014 by the twin brothers of billionaire Winklevoss, Gemini is a cryptocurrency exchange, custodian provider and stablecoin issuer. The company first expressed its intention to go public more than four years ago in January 2021.

After the catastrophic collapse of FTX, Gemini was forced to stop withdrawing money from its "Earn" program, which had provided loans to bankrupt exchanges through a third-party loan called Genesis. Gemini later reached a $50 million settlement with New York State on the matter and was lucky enough to return 100% of the funds owed to depositors.

While the subsequent arrival of a cryptocurrency bear market led to a plunge in valuation and forced Gemini to shelve its IPO ambitions, recent Bloomberg reports suggest Winklevi is considering an IPO in 2025.

Gemini's only external financing was announced in November 2021, receiving $400 million in funding at a valuation of $7.1 billion.

Circle

Without Circle, the list of top IPO competitors for cryptocurrencies is incomplete. The company is the largest audited stablecoin issuer, with its $56 billion dollar-pegged assets flooding all existing major blockchains!

Circle ended its plans to merge and list with Concord Acquisition Corp through SPAC in December 2022, but disclosed in January 2024 that it had filed a U.S. initial public offering application to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under "market and other conditions", the company's IPO can be carried out at any time after the SEC completes the registration review process.

Last September, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire unveiled plans to move the company’s headquarters to the center of the New York City Financial District, where the office will occupy the entire floor of the iconic World Trade Center 87.

Since its inception in 2013, Circle has raised about $1.5 billion in multiple rounds of funding, valued at $9 billion before abandoning the SPAC merger.

Kraken

In April 2021, shortly after the competitive cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase made its debut in the stock market with a valuation of $47 billion, Kraken Kraken CEO Jesse Powell announced plans to put it in the second half of 2022. Listed on the exchange.

Although the company's IPO ambitions appear to fade after Powell resigned in September 2022, Bloomberg reported in June last year that Kraken is seeking to raise $100 million through a pre-IPO financing round and confirmed last month that it has been issued from the offering. 27 million US dollars in Tier 1 capital was obtained.

Kraken has conducted more than 20 independent rounds of financing, rumored to be valued at $20 billion in Series D rounds near the peak of the cryptocurrency market in 2021.

Digital Currency Group

Digital Currency Group is one of the oldest cryptocurrency-focused venture capital groups in existence and has been an indispensable part of the crypto capital market since its inception!

As of early 2023, DCG held stakes in more than 160 portfolio companies but was forced to divest some of these shares, including all interests in cryptocurrency publisher CoinDesk, to raise funds through loan subsidiary Genesis to pay for bad FTX loans. It is worth noting that crypto asset management company Grayscale Grayscale remains a wholly-owned subsidiary of the digital currency group.

While the $700 million equity financing in November 2021 valued DCG to $10 billion, the company's recently published shareholder letter for the fourth quarter of 2023 write down its valuation to just $4.4 billion; The rebound, this number undoubtedly increased in the following months.

Consensys

Founded in 2014 by Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and former Vice President of Goldman Sachs, Consensys started as an independent software engineering company that can support development of Ethereum through third-party applications such as its popular MetaMask MetaMask wallet.

While Consensys has not officially announced its IPO, Lubin responded to the Smiling Emoji (see below) in a January 2025 tweet that begged Consensys to go public and adopt an Ethereum reserve accumulation strategy, which could indicate an IPO is coming.

The last time Consensys raised $450 million in Series D in 2022, when the company was valued at $7 billion.

In addition to Circle and Kraken, crypto-native asset management company Bitwise also pointed out in its 10 Forecasts for 2025 report that infrastructure provider Anchorage Digital, tokenization company Figure and analytics service Chainalysis are key candidates for the upcoming listing.

Bullish Global, a cryptocurrency exchange backed by Peter Thiel, reportedly acquired DCG’s ownership of CoinDesk and is currently considering working with Jefferies Financial Group and JPMorgan to develop a public listing strategy; meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s upcoming XRP lawsuit The case (currently appealed on the Second Circuit) may pave the way for Ripple's IPO.

Fastening your seat belts may be a big year this year.