Shares of Bullish (NYSE: BLSH) delivered one of the year’s most explosive market debuts on Wednesday, instantly transforming its co-founders, Brendan Blumer and Kokuei Yuan, into the world’s newest crypto billionaires. The Peter Thiel-backed exchange priced its initial public offering at $37 a share, well above expectations, before surging as much as 218% in intraday trading to $118.
By the closing bell, Bullish had settled at $68, still up an impressive 83% on its first day. The IPO raised $1.1 billion and valued the Cayman Islands-based company at $5.4 billion before trading began, a figure that ballooned to roughly $14 billion at Wednesday’s peak.
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Two Fortunes Minted Overnight
Blumer, 39, emerged as the largest individual shareholder, holding a 30.1% stake worth approximately $3.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Yuan’s 26.7% stake was valued at $3.1 billion. The pair, who first teamed up over a decade ago in Hong Kong’s property tech sector, have now established themselves among the most influential figures in digital finance.
Bullish’s IPO joins a wave of high-profile crypto listings that have minted new billionaires in 2025. Stablecoin issuer Circle (NYSE: CRCL) soared 168% on its first trading day in June, boosting co-founder Jeremy Allaire’s fortune to $3.3 billion. Trading platform Webull (NASDAQ: BULL) rocketed 375% in its trading debut earlier this year, similarly minting billion-dollar fortunes for both of its founders.
A Hybrid Model for the Institutional Era
Led by CEO Tom Farley, the former New York Stock Exchange president who oversaw landmark IPOs for Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and Snap (NYSE: SNAP), Bullish has carved out a niche blending decentralized finance protocols with the security and compliance of traditional markets. The platform, which processed $1.25 trillion in transactions through March 31, focuses heavily on institutional investors while also owning CoinDesk, a leading crypto news and analytics provider.
In an interview on Wednesday with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Farley stated:
The last leg of growth in crypto, the last 10 years, was basically all retail and … the institutional wave has begun. It’s here, and it’s a question of how big it will be. Based on the reception we’ve gotten thus far as part of our IPO, it feels like institutional investors feel like this could be the moment.
Farley’s comments echo growing sentiment on Wall Street that major players, from asset managers to payment giants like PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL), are warming to digital assets.
Bullish’s model mirrors the disruption seen in fintech during the 2010s, when platforms such as PayPal and Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) upended traditional finance. By combining regulated exchange infrastructure with features more common to decentralized platforms, Bullish is positioning itself as a bridge between worlds, a pitch that resonated with both institutional backers and retail investors during the IPO.
Source: CNBC Television YouTube
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Crypto Market Tailwinds and Big-Name Backers
The debut came amid favorable market conditions for digital assets. Bitcoin (BTCUSD) hovered near $121,600 and Ethereum (ETHUSD) traded above $4,700 on Wednesday, levels not seen since their previous peaks. That bullish sentiment, coupled with regulatory clarity from the Trump administration’s GENIUS Act framework for stablecoins, has created a friendlier environment for crypto infrastructure plays.
The exchange’s pedigree is also hard to ignore. Alongside Thiel, billionaire investor Mike Novogratz, whose Galaxy Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: GLXY) recently moved its listing to the Nasdaq, and other early backers of Block.one, the company Blumer and Yuan co-founded in 2017, have lent credibility to the Bullish story. Block.one seeded Bullish with $10 billion in assets at launch, including 164,000 Bitcoin, and retains a minority stake after reducing its holding below 50% in mid-2024.
The momentum in IPO markets has been broad-based this year, with other notable debuts including social trading platform eToro (NASDAQ: ETOR), valued at $5.4 billion, and design software leader Figma (NYSE: FIG), whose $47.1 billion listing reinforced investor appetite for high-growth technology plays.
Risks Beneath the Rally
Despite the euphoria, analysts caution that Bullish’s valuation depends on sustaining institutional adoption in a notoriously volatile sector. The company’s financial performance has swung wildly, from a $4.2 billion loss in 2022 to a $1.3 billion profit in 2023. Its significant Bitcoin holdings, over 24,000 BTC worth $1.7 billion as of March 31, expose it to sharp market swings, and the SEC’s ongoing scrutiny of certain crypto products remains a potential headwind.
For now, Bullish stands as a rare success story in a sector where IPOs often disappoint. Whether it marks the dawn of a new era for crypto exchanges or another fleeting boom will depend on the exchange’s ability to navigate market cycles, regulatory shifts, and the evolving demands of institutional investors.
With heavy trading volume, a hybrid business model, and two freshly minted billionaires at the helm, Bullish’s debut is already one for the record books. The question now is whether it can turn a spectacular first day into sustained long-term growth, or if this rally will eventually meet the same fate as so many others in the fast-moving world of digital finance.
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