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New crypto IPO rockets past wall street expectations

PLUS: Inside the $1.1B crypto IPO, LINK’s breakout, and Google’s policy flip.

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Cryptopolitan News
August 14, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Welcome back, friends —

Bullish stormed the NYSE with an $1.1B IPO that left bankers scrambling for allocation.
Bitcoin has a new ATH, LINK is locking down the oracle market, and even Google had to walk back its wallet crackdown.

Let’s break it down.

New crypto IPO rockets past wall street expectations

Bullish debuts on NYSE, jumps 83% on Day 1 as Trump-era crypto optimism fuels institutional demand.

The bulls are back on Wall Street and this time, they’re wearing suits.

Crypto exchange Bullish, backed by Peter Thiel and led by former NYSE President Tom Farley, exploded onto the New York Stock Exchange this week with an $1.1B IPO that smashed expectations. The stock opened at $90 more than 2.4x its IPO price of $37 briefly touched $118, and closed the day with an 83% gain.

💰 Final valuation? $5.4 billion.
🧾 IPO was 20x oversubscribed.
📈 Heavyweight buyers: BlackRock & ARK showed interest in $200M worth of shares.

Not your average crypto exchange

Bullish isn’t chasing retail traders or memecoin gamblers. It’s built for institutions, combining DeFi-inspired infrastructure with TradFi-grade compliance. It also owns CoinDesk.

Since launch in 2021, Bullish has cleared $1.25 trillion in trading volume, and is incorporated in the Cayman Islands (for obvious reasons). Ownership remains tightly held:

  • Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer: owns 30.1%

  • Board member Kokuei Yuan: holds 26.7%

JPMorgan, Jefferies, and Citigroup led the offering.

A Trump-fueled wave of crypto IPOs

This isn’t an isolated pump. Bullish joins a growing list of crypto firms racing to go public under the Trump administration’s pro-crypto tilt, including:

  • Circle: Raised $1B in June

  • Galaxy Digital: Switched to Nasdaq

  • eToro: Valued at $5.4B

  • BitGo & Gemini: IPO filings underway

Bullish’s debut comes weeks after Trump signed the Stablecoin Act into law, unlocking legal clarity that institutional players had been begging for. Suddenly, exchanges, wallets, and infrastructure providers have a greenlight to scale.

And they’re wasting no time.

🗣️ “Institutions believe this is the moment,” said Farley on CNBC. “The retail wave came first — now the institutional phase has begun.”

TLDR: Why Bullish matters

✅ Massive IPO oversubscription shows demand for institutional crypto players
✅ Trump-era policy shift is unlocking the next phase of crypto public listings
✅ Bullish joins the growing pack of billion-dollar crypto IPOs: Circle, eToro, Galaxy
✅ Its strategy? Combine exchange, media, and deep liquidity to corner TradFi inflows

🧠 Signal vs Noise

The KIKI token launch wasn’t mismanaged.
It was engineered to extract millions.

Jay Ha, known as “Kokoro,” sniped 85% of the supply, faked IP rights, ran OTC scams, and vanished after draining over $3 million in investor funds. The entire thing was orchestrated: from fake listings to delayed launches, all under the guise of a memecoin revival.

Here’s the context:

• Jay Ha claimed that he paid $360,000 to secure KIKI’s IP, but that number was exposed as fake. KIKI’s IP was never transferred. The “$360K” deal was actually $20K with no legal docs.
• OTC deals raised $2M+, but funds vanished with no listings to show.
• Team wallets dumped 20% of supply on day one to avoid on-chain tracking.
• Marketing invoices were inflated, and promised tokens never delivered.

Meanwhile, “community” efforts are now trying to salvage the wreckage but only after the insiders disappeared across borders.

This wasn’t just a rug. It was a masterclass in stealth liquidation wrapped in memecoin buzzwords.

TL;DR
• KIKI was hijacked by insiders before launch.
• OTC sales, listings, and IP were all fake or inflated.
• Token dumps were timed to avoid cluster exposure.
• Community rebuilds started only after funds vanished.

📢 Signal: KIKI was never built for holders. It was a structured insider exit masked as a meme.
💭 Noise: “Just another botched memecoin launch.”

Chart our finance team is watching

1/ Bitcoin just set a new all-time high of $123,637.

But that’s not the whole story.

  • $397M in liquidations followed and $259M came from shorts who bet wrong.

  • ETH followed the momentum, now just 3% shy of its 2021 peak.

  • Total crypto market cap hit $4.2 trillion, with Ethereum leading inflows.

Meanwhile, “ETHZilla” (formerly 180 Life Sciences) revealed it holds 82,186 ETH and its stock price skyrocketed 250%, backed by Peter Thiel.

For the first time, ETH ETFs outpaced BTC ETFs in daily volume, pulling in $1.7B in August vs BTC’s $436M net outflows.

Standard Chartered raised its 2025 ETH target to $7,500 up from $4,000.

2/ LINK breaks out on strongest sentiment wave of 2025.

  • LINK hit a three-month high at $23.79, with $2B+ in 24h trading volume.

  • It now secures $62B in TVS, covering 453 projects across 21 chains.

  • Oracle dominance: 61% of all oracle-secured funds run through Chainlink.

The rally followed buybacks from core wallets, ETF and RWA integration demand, and exposure in the White House digital asset report.

LINK is also a key player in the 'Made in USA' narrative and CCIP cross-chain transfers are gaining steam especially for USDC and LBTC across Arbitrum and Base.

Google bends to industry pressure

Google has backtracked on its plan to impose strict licensing rules on non-custodial crypto wallets in the Play Store after fierce industry backlash.

Initially, the policy lumped all wallets together, demanding financial licenses like U.S. FinCEN registration or EU MiCA compliance, sparking confusion and criticism.

Non-custodial wallets, where users control their funds, typically face lighter regulation, and experts like Consensys’ Bill Hughes called the rules a “mess.” Facing pushback from crypto advocates and legal experts, Google clarified that non-custodial wallets are exempt, while custodial ones still need licenses.

This reversal highlights the crypto sector’s growing clout in shaping Big Tech policies, especially as Google navigates antitrust scrutiny.

Top data-backed market analysts to follow on X

Here are Cryptopolitan’s top picks:

@jespow – Kraken co-founder. Offers sharp macro + regulatory takes, especially around the future of crypto exchanges and stablecoins.

@karl_0x – Co-founder of OP Labs (Optimism). Focused on L2 scaling, on-chain UX, and stablecoin velocity across rollups.

@MikeBurgersburg – Behind Dirty Bubble Media. Investigative deep dives into stablecoin backing, Tether audits, and systemic risks.

@tomwanhh – Research at 21co. Tracks stablecoin volumes, pegs, and market share across chains with clean, consistent threads.

@will__price – Framework Ventures. Deep coverage on yield primitives, stablecoin flows, and the liquidity layers of DeFi.

SEO team picks (backed by keyword research)

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