Marco Bello
Bullish, a cryptocurrency exchange whose co-founders include Palantir (PLTR) CEO Peter Thiel, has filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, according to a regulatory filing.
The company, based in the Cayman Islands and led by CEO Tom Farley, a former president of NYSE, has sought to list under the ticker symbol “BLSH,” the filing submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday indicated.
Bullish was established in 2020 with investments from backers such as Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, as well as from Nomura and others.
According to the SEC filing, Bullish swung to a net loss of $348.6M in Q1 2025 compared to $104.8M of net income in the prior-year period as its digital asset sales remained roughly unchanged at $80.2B. The company has identified Binance, Coinbase (COIN), and Kraken among its competitors.
“We intend to IPO because we believe that the digital assets industry is beginning its next leg of growth,” Farley wrote in a letter submitted with the filing. “We view transparency and compliance as hallmarks of how we operate Bullish, and believe those values align well with the public capital markets,” he added.
Bullish’s IPO plans come at a time when some of the crypto-linked firms have resorted to public markets in recent months to raise funds.
The stablecoin issuer Circle Internet (NYSE:CRCL) has more than doubled in value since its $1.2B IPO in early June, while eToro Group (NASDAQ:ETOR), an online trading platform offering crypto services, saw a double-digit percentage gain in its share price on the first day of trading in May.