Published: Wednesday, February 11, 2026 · 10:41 PM | Updated: Wednesday, February 11, 2026 · 10:41 PM
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🗝️ Key Points
- Even with the past year’s crop of cryptocurrency IPOs having suffered massive losses amid bitcoin’s plunge, a new batch of crypto companies is expected to go public in 2026.
- Potential contenders are already lining up.
- Kraken, a crypto exchange specialist, filed confidentially for an IPO in the fourth quarter.
Even with the past year’s crop of cryptocurrency IPOs having suffered massive losses amid bitcoin’s plunge, a new batch of crypto companies is expected to go public in 2026.
Potential contenders are already lining up. Kraken, a crypto exchange specialist, filed confidentially for an IPO in the fourth quarter. Consensys, the parent company of the popular wallet MetaMask, and Ledger, a hardware wallet manufacturer, are reportedly beginning to prep listings.
Many of the current investors in these still-private companies took their stakes when the firms were nascent upstarts and at much lower valuations. They’ve now been waiting a long time to cash out—in some cases, over a decade. With the Trump administration’s pro-crypto stance and Wall Street’s growing appetite for stablecoins and other digital asset infrastructure, the industry is seizing the moment.
But public market investors are finding out the hard way that the shorter-term prospects of these stocks are closely tied to the ups and downs of cryptocurrency prices.
“It really just comes down to most cryptocurrency companies are very heavily exposed to both the price of cryptocurrency and then the amount of interest there is in cryptocurrency, which tends to be influenced by price performance,” said Michael Miller, a Morningstar analyst who covers Coinbase.
But one potential haven could be companies with strong stablecoin businesses, such as Kraken. Stablecoins don’t have the volatility of traditional cryptocurrencies because their value is linked to the underlying investments, generally US treasuries.
Crypto IPOs’ big losses
Many crypto investors went into 2025 with high hopes that with allies in the White House, it would be the year that bitcoin and other currencies went mainstream. For a time, it seemed to go that way, with the price of bitcoin rising to a record high of roughly $126,000 in October from below $94,000 at the end of 2024.
Against this backdrop, a number of crypto companies went public, most seeing big first-day pops from the IPO price.
Bullish, which went public last August, had an 89% first-day pop. EToro, whose shares debuted in May, saw its stock jump by 29%. Shares of Gemini Space Station, founded by the Winklevoss twins, rose 14% on their first day of trading in September.
But beginning in October, bitcoin suffered a collapse that took it below $63,000 this month, and those stocks have posted huge losses. Circle, eToro, Bullish and Gemini are all trading below their listing price, with Bullish down more than 52%, eToro down 58% and Gemini cratering nearly 80%.
“The structure of these companies is very risky, and then when you have a new company that’s presumably small, you’re just doubling down on that theme,” Miller said.
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Stablecoin issuer Circle is down 11%, a relatively modest loss compared to the rest of the group.
“One of the big challenges for cryptocurrency companies in general is to try to find more stable recurring revenue sources,” Miller said. “So that’s why you’ve seen stablecoins be a source for that.”
Crypto IPO window is still open
Despite the thrashing that the public stocks have taken, the backdrop for private companies’ exits is still seen as positive by industry insiders.
“A more mature set of companies [has] meaningfully reopened both IPO and M&A paths,” said Aklil Ibssa, Coinbase’s head of corporate development. “In 2026, exits will favor institutional-grade companies with real scale and fundamentals that stand on their own, not those reliant on market cycles alone.”
Part of the optimism revolves around stablecoin issuers and infrastructure providers.
“Public investors either want a company [that] isn’t directly indexed to cryptocurrency prices or has substantial financial resources that they can withstand a bad market,” Miller said.
US banks—including Morgan Stanley, Citi and Bank of America—began eyeing stablecoins last summer ahead of the US Senate’s Genius Act, which established federal frameworks for stablecoins.
Federal agencies have also provided greater regulatory clarity. The FDIC announced last March that banks can engage in crypto activity without prior approval. The agency also removed SEC oversight requirements for covered stablecoins.
“One of the big trends from like late 2024 to 2025 was this idea that a more favorable regulatory regime was going to allow for much better business conditions for these companies, and that’s probably why you’re seeing more interest in IPOs now,” Miller said. “Getting SEC approval under the old regulatory regime just seems extremely challenging to me.”
Among the companies seen as most likely to go public in 2026, Kraken has the most substantial stablecoin business, thanks to a bank charter and an active stablecoin-yield product.
Top VC-backed companies like Ripple, meanwhile, have closed substantial late-stage rounds at high valuations. The company was valued at $40 billion in a $500 million late-stage round in November 2025.
Ripple, which has raised about $926 million in total, was previously valued at $15 billion in a January 2022 secondaries transaction. It then used those proceeds to acquire crypto prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25 billion.
Ripple’s leadership has said the company has no imminent IPO plans. But it may just be a matter of time: PitchBook’s VC Exit Predictor pegs Ripple’s eventual IPO probability at 96%.
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Last year was also a big year for crypto M&A, including the largest transaction in the sector yet: Coinbase’s $2.9 billion acquisition of exchange Deribit. M&A in the crypto industry notched $7.7 billion in overall deal value, across 288 pacts. In 2024, there were 234 M&A transactions, totaling $2.4 billion.
“It’s not just about getting bigger, but also diversifying the different types of revenue you have, and, from that, you create a much better chance of being successful with the IPO,” said Quynh Ho, GSR’s head of venture investment.
The SEC and CFTC announced last week that both regulators are forming a joint venture to implement the administration’s crypto priorities. The agencies had previously squabbled over crypto oversight.
“Significant work remains,” SEC Chair Paul Atkins said, adding that the goal is to “reduce uncertainty” and “lower the cost of compliance” for crypto investors.
Featured image by PitchBook News
This article originally appeared on PitchBook News
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