Bullish CEO Tom Farley, center, celebrates after ringing the NYSE opening bell on Aug. 13, 2025 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
For years, venture capitalists predicted that big-ticket crypto IPOs were just around the corner. And for years, that never became a reality.
But 2025 heated up the crypto IPO market, as well as startup M&A. It was also a banner year for regulatory clarity in the US.
And investors say 2026 is primed for even more significant liquidity, while industry participants are hoping the US government settles some crucial regulatory matters that remain up in the air.
VCs have pushed into later-stage rounds as regulatory tailwinds have more startups lining up to go public in 2026.
Top of mind is a bill addressing crypto’s market structure, which has been held up in Congress. It aims to establish clear rules over crypto yield-bearing products and Wall Street’s investment in stablecoins.
The market saw an unprecedented number of public listings of crypto-related companies, including Bullish, Circle, eToro, Figure and Gemini, while veteran operators like Grayscale Investments and Kraken filed for IPOs, with others expected to follow suit.
VC activity, meanwhile, ramped up as Wall Street deepened its crypto ties. Polymarket, for instance, landed a strategic $2 billion commitment from the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company.
Underscoring the liquidity surge: the Trump administration’s SEC and Congress are both showing pro-crypto support.
“2025 marked the professionalization of crypto, and the public markets noticed,” said Mike Bellin, a PwC partner who leads the firm’s US IPO division. “[Next year], it’s going to continue. When we look at our pipeline, … what we’ve noticed is a lot of money went into crypto, and the early 2020, 2021 market was not ready to take these companies public. The regulatory framework was not there to take these companies public.”
The fourth quarter could have seen even more IPOs, according to Elliot Han, chief investment officer at C1 Fund, a publicly traded closed-end fund that invests in crypto companies.
The federal government’s prolonged shutdown pushed some listings back to Q1 2026, Han said, adding that stock market volatility at the end of Q3 also added a wrinkle to public listings in the list.
Meanwhile, CVCs and corporates have become more active, and further consolidation could be in the cards for the coming quarters, according to Han. More relaxed regulations are expected to help fuel more M&A.
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“There’s going to be consolidation in all of these areas—compliance, custody and data providers,” Han said. “There’s going to be natural consolidation targets. Simply put, regulators don’t want so many disparate parties. They want fewer, stronger companies in these areas.”
Wall Street startup investors in venture rounds have been especially enamored with stablecoins. Major public players, such as Visa, this year have struck ambitious stablecoin partnerships in a bid to bridge blockchain settlement tech with legacy payment stacks.
“We were as busy as ever in 2025 on the venture side, and I see no reason the momentum isn’t going to continue fully in 2026,” said Hoolie Tejwani, head of Coinbase Ventures. “On the early-stage investing side, this was really the year of stablecoin summer. There was a ton of deal activity.”
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Still, some investors caution that the surge of institutional capital could be tempered in the coming months by macro factors and startup valuations ballooning too much.
Early-stage VC deal value held steady in 2025 over 2024, but growth venture rounds boomed, reflecting growing M&A possibilities for acquirers of mature crypto companies.
Venture growth deal value totaled $7.7 billion last year, up from $65 million in 2024—and breaking 2021’s record $6.38 billion.
“It’s going to continue,” said Matt Homer, founder and general partner of The Venture Dept., a crypto VC firm. “We’ll continue to see more M&A activity. The question is whether at some point fatigue sets in. There’s already been some impressive results.”
Though industry participants broadly say US regulation has never been clearer and President Donald Trump signed into law landmark stablecoin legislation in the GENIUS Act, there are still several unsettled and significant gaps.
There’s also the matter of the mixed performance of 2025 crypto IPOs, with several losing some of their initial stock price gains.
“Based on that, as a growth-stage founder, you’re weighing those options until you see post-IPO performance perform well,” said Paul Hsu, founder and CEO of VC firm Decasonic, which backs crypto and AI startups. “You may skip this window, as well.”
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