Hot Crypto Summer Is Here… And a Cayman Island Money Pit Just Filed for an IPO With Thiel’s Blessing

By Stocks News   |   5 days ago   |   Stock Market News
Hot Crypto Summer Is Here… And a Cayman Island Money Pit Just Filed for an IPO With Thiel’s Blessing

Forget “hot girl summer”… we’ve officially entered unregulated bull market summer (it’s like hot girl summer, except instead of bikinis and spritzers, it’s offshore entities and 3x leverage).

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With Coinbase now sitting inside the S&P 500, the message from Wall Street is about as subtle as a laser-eyed Twitter avatar: crypto isn’t going away. It’s not a joke. It’s not a phase. And institutional money is no longer pretending it doesn’t exist (ok, except for Vanguard, who’s still pretending crypto is the devil in disguise).

This is a big deal. Being added to the S&P means passive index funds (we’re talking trillions in forced capital) are now buying Coinbase whether they want to or not. It’s the kind of structural shift crypto companies have been chasing since 2017, when most investors still thought Ethereum was a vitamin.

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And if you’ve even glanced at the markets recently (or opened Twitter without muting the word “bullish”), it’s pretty clear: crypto IPOs are heating up. Case in point: Circle Internet. The company behind USDC went public in June. One month later, it was up 750%. That kind of move usually belongs to some pre-revenue biotech firm claiming it cured cancer in mice. But here? It was a stablecoin play. And the market didn’t even blink. It wanted exposure. Circle had it. End of transaction. Now Peter Thiel is making his entrance… stage left, through a secret passage behind a (reads notes) Cayman Islands trust.

His crypto exchange, Bullish, just filed to go public on the NYSE under the ticker BLSH… which, not to be rude, reads like “bullsh*t” with the vowels left out (so maybe keep that in the back of your mind before aping in). It’s being led by Tom Farley, the former president of the actual NYSE. That’s right, the guy running this new crypto exchange used to run the same exchange it's now begging for legitimacy from. (It’s either a power move or the financial version of sleeping with your old boss’s boss.)

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Operationally, Bullish has scale. They’re doing over $2.5 billion in daily crypto volume, making them a top-five player in Bitcoin and Ether spot trading. Since launch, they’ve cleared over $1.25 trillion in trades. So far, so good. Then come the financials… and things get a little sketchy.

In Q1, Bullish made $80 million in revenue… and somehow managed to incinerate $349 million in the process. Not only is that egregious… but it’s a cry for help. You don’t stumble into that kind of loss… you have to actively train for it. (At this point, their business model might just be setting money on fire and selling the smoke as Web3.)

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Also worth noting: they’re headquartered in the Cayman Islands. Now, to be fair, that’s not unusual in crypto. But when your whole pitch is about transparency and compliance, maybe don’t park the HQ in the same jurisdiction that also houses 2,000 shell companies and a Margaritaville. (Just a thought.) Then there’s the U.S. angle. Their margin and derivatives products aren’t available to American users… still the largest pool of capital on the planet. Which means a good chunk of their potential business is legally off-limits for now. Fun!

So why file for an IPO now? Because the timing couldn’t be more perfect. The GENIUS Act just became law… giving stablecoins actual legal footing in the U.S. Coinbase just got inducted into the most important stock index on Earth. And institutions are pouring capital back into Bitcoin and Ethereum like nothing ever happened in 2022. (No one mention Terra. Or Celsius. Or BlockFi. We’re healing.)

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In that context, Bullish’s move isn’t crazy… it’s actually strategic. Sure, they’re vaporizing cash like it's an Olympic sport… but that’s nothing new in the crypto world. What they do have is real infrastructure, a trading engine that’s handled over a trillion in volume, and a leadership team that actually knows how to navigate a capital market without accidentally tweeting themselves into an SEC investigation. And their backers? Thiel, Nomura, Novogratz… not exactly lightweights. Say what you want about the losses… but the people writing the checks clearly see something worth betting on. (Even if it currently looks like a very expensive science experiment.)

If crypto really is entering another bull cycle (and the price action plus policy support suggest it is) then public markets are going to be hungry for more exposure. Coinbase can’t do it all. Circle’s already had its run. That next layer of names? Bullish wants to be first in line.

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Will investors look past the Cayman address and $349 million quarterly loss? Maybe. It wouldn’t be the first time a fast-growing, money-hemorrhaging company got a standing ovation on Wall Street. (See: Uber. Or Tesla. Or, depending on how generous you're feeling, Robinhood.) But this cycle feels different. The market’s more mature. Regulations are finally taking shape. And the same institutions that once scoffed at Bitcoin are now writing research reports with price targets.

Bullish doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be standing in the right spot when the next crypto flood rolls in. And from where I’m sitting? They’re already ankle-deep.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Uber, Tesla, Vanguard (VTI), and Robinhood as mentioned in the article.

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