Peter Thiel is doubling down on crypto in public markets.
His backing of Bullish, the Cayman Islands-based digitalasset platform led by former New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley, helped the company complete a $1.15 billion IPO last month, mostly settled in stablecoins on the Solana network: a US first. Coinbase will custody most of the proceeds, primarily in USDC, with a portion in EURC.
Bullish priced its IPO at $37 per share, but the stock opened at $90 on the NYSE under the ticker BLSH, more than doubling its debut value and giving the company a roughly $13.16 billion valuation: a signal of strong investor confidence and a boost for future digital asset listings.
The IPO window is now “wide open,” says Julian Klymochko, CEO of Accelerate Financial Technologies. “Investors remain enamored with digital asset companies.”
Thiel, the Palantir chair and venture capitalist, is also backing the Austrian crypto exchange Bitpanda, which is preparing its own IPO. CEO Eric Demuth says the company is targeting Frankfurt or New York.
Other crypto IPOs reflect growing mainstream adoption, as the total market recently surpassed $4 trillion. Circle, eToro, Gemini, Grayscale, BitGo, Kraken, Fireblocks, and Chainalysis are all pursuing public listings in 2025 or 2026.
“Every brand-name crypto company that goes public should trade well in the current market environment,” Klymochko argues. “There likely would be heavy retail investor support for these names.” For Bullish, retail investors missed out; a planned SPAC IPO in 2022 fizzled when then-U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler imposed greater regulatory oversight on the industry, leaving them out billions of dollars in value creation.
Thiel, with a net worth of $23.6 billion, is also investing in Ethereum-focused ventures such as BitMine Immersion Technologies, ETHZilla, and Erebor, a bank for crypto and AI startups. Bullish and Bitpanda reflect his long-standing vision of cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin, which he described seven years ago as “a hedge of sorts against the whole world falling apart.”