That appeared to be validated in June when Circle’s stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $69, more than double the price of $31. Investors paid regulated stablecoin issuers with real revenue, treating USDC rails as financial infrastructure rather than speculative crypto exposure.
Six months later, Circle is trading at $82.58, up nearly 20% from the opening print. The paper was completed.
But the rest of the 2025 IPO class told a different story. eToro debuted at $69.69 and is now down 48.6% to $35.85. The bull market collapsed from $90 to $43.20, a 52% wipeout. Winklevoss-backed exchange Gemini listed at $37.01, but lost 70% of its value and was trading at $11.07 by mid-December.
Even staking provider Figment, which rose 11.2% to $40.04, barely cleared its launch price of $36.
With Bitcoin down 8.5% year-to-date to $85,620, this group’s performance looks less like a victory for crypto stocks and more like a live stress test of how much risk investors are willing to take on top of the asset itself.
This variation is important because 2025 was supposed to be the coming out party for crypto stocks. With Circle’s $1 billion public offering, HashKey’s debut in Hong Kong with over 400 times more registrations, and stocked pipelines with the likes of Kraken and Consensys, this year proved that crypto infrastructure can impact multiple companies on Wall Street.
Instead, the scorecard reveals something more selective. Public markets will take on crypto business, but only if the cash flows are defensible, the regulatory stance is clear, and the multiples do not assume a permanent bull market situation.
A window that seemed open in June narrowed sharply in December, and the question in 2026 is whether that window will remain open at all, or whether it will close for all but a handful of stocks that survive into 2025 with their valuations intact.
Strategic Split: Infrastructure vs. Beta
It’s no coincidence of timing that Circle performed so well against other groups.
The company makes money from USDC reserves, essentially arbitraging the spread between Treasury yields and the zero interest it pays stablecoin holders.
This model works whether Bitcoin trades at $100,000 or $50,000, insulating Circle from the pure directional betting that defines exchanges like Gemini and trading platforms like eToro.
When spot cryptocurrency volume spikes, those companies immediately lose fees. The circle continues to make money.
Figment’s modest 11% gain reflects similar logic. The staking infrastructure relies on the adoption of a proof-of-stake network rather than speculative trading activity. As long as Ethereum, Solana, and other PoS chains continue to validate blocks, Figment will collect its share.
In contrast, eToro, Bullish, and Gemini are commission machines tied directly to retail enthusiasm. When Bitcoin fell 8.5% in 2025 and altcoin trading volumes subsequently declined, trading activity disappeared on these platforms.
Investors who bought IPOs in hopes of sustained crypto mania were instead found to have leveraged their holdings to the downside. Losses in excess of 50% do not reflect business failure, but rather the market re-pricing what a “crypto asset” actually means when the underlying asset fluctuates.
Retail investors demanded compensation for that volatility, and stock prices adjusted accordingly.
The lesson for 2026 is that crypto stocks are polarized. On the one hand, there are companies with durable, counter-cyclical, or quasi-infrastructure business models that can justify premium valuations even if Bitcoin goes sideways.
On the other hand, a platform that is making money in lockstep with speculative fervor. The former can take advantage of the public market whenever the IPO window opens. The latter requires Bitcoin at an all-time high for the underwriting calculation to work.
2025 was a test run, not a victory lap.
Circle and Figment proved that real companies can go public and retain value. Gemini, eToro, and Bullish have proven that investors are no longer blindly following crypto beta in the form of stocks.
This price change was implemented quickly. By late November, Bloomberg Law noted that new U.S. IPOs posted slightly negative returns in the fourth quarter, despite S&P piling up gains, and that crypto IPOs were “one of the biggest victims” of the quarter’s drawdown.
The message was clear. Retail investors will continue to buy crypto risk, but only if they need the right price and return visibility. The “anything goes with blockchain” phase ended somewhere between Circle’s debut in June and Gemini’s collapse in December.
ConsenSys joining the queue signals confidence that it can survive into 2026, but also that the founders know the opportunity won’t last forever. The equity route closes if interest rates rise, Bitcoin corrects significantly, or capital returns to speculating in the native token.
Companies that go public in 2025 will have gone public just in time. The stragglers may wait years for their next shot.
Scorecard reveals risk appetite in 2026
The underperformance of the 2025 IPO cohort relative to Bitcoin suggests that equity investors are treating these businesses as leveraged, fee-driven, cyclical stand-ins rather than long-term growth stories.
This raises the bar for 2026. Companies seeking to go public will need to demonstrate cash generation that can survive a flat or declining market, not just hockey-stick projections that assume retail euphoria continues.
However, Circle’s continued profitability indicates an enduring demand for regulated crypto infrastructure.
Investors still want exposure to stablecoin rails, tokenization platforms, and custody providers – businesses with transparent regulations and revenues.
Bitcoin’s decline hasn’t erased that appetite, it’s just made it more selective.
Nasdaq forecasts a surge in listings of $1 billion or more in 2026, with U.S. IPO revenues expected to increase by about 80% in 2025 compared to 2024. Falling interest rates, high valuations and broad market sentiment support that view.
But the list of winners remains narrow. An analysis of the tech capital markets for IPO gainers in 2025 showed that AI and crypto stocks such as CoreWeave and Circle dominated, with few breakouts outside of these themes. The 2026 risk budget is focused rather than broad.
New crypto listings will need to fit into a clear structural narrative, including stablecoin infrastructure, tokenized assets, on-chain AI integration, and institutional custody, to compete for that capital.
A16z’s “State of Crypto 2025” positions this year as a year of institutional adoption, and Circle’s IPO marks the moment stablecoin issuers became mainstream financial institutions.
The report notes that products traded on exchanges now hold about $175 billion in crypto assets, up 169% from a year ago, and that public “digital asset vault” companies control about 4% of the combined supply of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
ETPs and treasury plays together account for approximately 10% of outstanding BTC and ETH. This is a deepening of the pipeline between capital markets and tokens, and the IPO cohort represents another node in that infrastructure.
However, institutional participation remains shallow. Reuters reported in mid-year that less than 5% of Spot Bitcoin ETF assets are held by pensions and endowments, with the remaining 10-15% held by hedge funds and asset managers.
Most flows still come from retail. Institutions with a truly long-term horizon are more likely to start with regulated wrappers, ETFs, listed exchanges, and stablecoin issuers than to bet directly on altcoins.
The 2025 IPO Scorecard shows what kind of risk these institutions are willing to take on their books. In other words, it is not a speculative trading platform that leverages the volume of meme coins, but rather a stable cash-generating business with a clear compliance framework.
The real questions for 2026
The performance of the 2025 cohort does not settle the question of whether crypto IPOs are a durable asset class. This clarifies the conditions under which the public market will be involved. Investors end up taking on a crypto business, but end up paying a multiple of a growth stock for a cyclical fee stream.
Circle’s resilience shows that there is demand for infrastructure plays that generate revenue independent of token price euphoria. Gemini’s 70% collapse shows that there is no demand for a platform whose revenue disappears the moment retailers lose interest.
This creates a narrow path to 2026. The regulatory environment is clearer and more stable, stablecoins are mainstream, and the window for general IPOs is open.
However, cryptocurrency risk is increasingly expressed not through token speculation, but through public market structures such as ETFs, corporate treasuries, and the now-scrutinized IPO cohort.
The companies that thread that needle next year will be the ones that convince investors that they’re building the financial plumbing rather than riding the wave. Those who can’t do that wait for the next cycle every time it comes.
