A difficult buy! The Bullish (BLSH.US) IPO sparked a frenzy of institutional buying, and opened with a skyrocketing increase of over 176%.

On Wednesday, the cryptocurrency trading platform Bullish (BLSH.US) officially entered the US stock market, with the opening stock price soaring over 176% to $102.44. According to reports, the IPO subscription demand exceeded the available shares by 20 times, with one-third of institutional investors failing to receive sufficient allocations. The management prioritized allocating most of the shares to long-term investors and existing partners. The IPO issued 30 million shares, with underwriters having the option to sell an additional 4.5 million shares within 30 days. The original price range was set at $32 to $33, with an initial plan to issue 20.3 million shares at a price range of $28 to $31. After the increase in the issuance size, the fundraising amount jumped from about $629 million to $990 million, with the IPO eventually priced at $37, giving the company a market value exceeding $5.4 billion. The underwriters include Wall Street giants such as JPMorgan Chase, Jefferies Financial Group Inc., and Citigroup. Bullish is backed by prominent investor Peter Thiel and has attracted high attention from institutions such as BlackRock, Inc. and ARK Investment Management, with both intending to subscribe up to $200 million worth of shares at the offering price, laying a solid foundation for its IPO. The company's predecessor is closely related to the cryptocurrency industry legend project EOS, with its parent company Block.one raising over $4 billion through the initial coin offering (ICO) of EOS in 2017-2018, setting a global record at that time. Although the price of EOS coins once approached $19, it has now fallen to around $0.54, highlighting the brutal lifecycle of cryptocurrency projects. Bullish acknowledges in its prospectus that this history may have an impact on licensing and approvals in some markets, but with a friendly regulatory environment in the US, these issues are no longer the main obstacles. Bullish currently operates in more than 50 jurisdictions (excluding the US), primarily offering digital asset trading and liquidity services to institutional clients. In November 2023, it acquired the cryptocurrency media giant CoinDesk for $72.6 million, which attracts nearly 4.9 million unique visitors on average each month in 2024. The company plans to convert some of the IPO funds into USD-pegged stablecoins to enhance trading liquidity and platform expansion. This IPO is also seen as an important signal of the resurgence of the cryptocurrency capital market. This year, Circle (CRCL.US) raised nearly $900 million in June, while Galaxy Digital (GLXY.US) and eToro Group (ETOR.US) went public. BitGo and Gemini have submitted applications for listing in the US, and top exchanges like Kraken and OKX are also preparing for IPOs, indicating a significant increase in institutional confidence in the digital asset space. On the policy front, US President Trump signed the "Genius Act" in July, and Congress passed multiple market structure and anti-central bank digital currency (CBDC) bills, clearing regulatory hurdles for the industry. However, while Bullish faces a bright future, it will also face fierce competition. The word "competition" appears 32 times in the prospectus, showing the management's vigilance. Established giants like Coinbase (COIN.US) and Binance, as well as a group of low-fee, high-liquidity upstarts, are continuously eating into market share. For Bullish, shedding the burden of history is just the first step; the real test of success in the "price war" of cryptocurrency exchanges remains to be seen.