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More crypto IPO filings from Gemini and Figure affirm investors will soon have a more complex investment universe to navigate.
Circle’s IPO turned heads in June. Bullish followed suit with its own NYSE listing two months later. It’s safe to say we’re just getting started.
I’m a journalist, so I won’t tell you which stocks to pick. I also don’t know; that would depend on the specific exposure you’re looking for. You must know by now that crypto companies are not a monolith.
You have your miners, your exchanges, your stablecoin issuers, etc. Coinbase was one of the only renowned crypto stocks in town for a while after its 2021 direct listing.
More recent regulatory tailwinds, crypto price surges and TradFi’s embrace of the space spurred demand for more pure-play exposure to crypto sectors with big growth potential (i.e. stablecoins and tokenization), Bitwise research head Ryan Rasmussen noted.
You therefore saw what he called the “massively oversubscribed” IPOs for Circle and Bullish. And he argued that investors haven’t fully gotten their fill.
“We expect investors to remain excited about crypto IPOs through the year end and beyond,” he told me. “Despite a handful of recent and successful crypto IPOs, there remains a massive shortage of publicly traded crypto companies.”
Gemini submitted an S-1 with the SEC on Friday, marking its latest step toward an IPO. Blockchain-based lender Figure followed suit Monday, applying to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Market.
Asset manager Grayscale and crypto custodian BitGo are among those also waiting their turn.
I asked Dan Weiskopf, co-PM of the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), about how to evaluate this growing set of public companies. His fund was essentially the first to focus on blockchain/crypto equities when it launched in 2018.
The space, of course, was a lot smaller seven years ago. The category’s universe has expanded by 25-35% over the past six months alone, Weiskopf told me.
BLOK’s process begins by evaluating the management’s experience in and commitment to the space. It tries to omit positions in firms “just trying to chase the fast buck,” Weiskopf noted.
“We are focused on operators who are trying to solve the necessary infrastructure problem beyond just facilitating transactions,” the BLOK PM added.
Also, valuations matter. Overpaying will obviously hurt returns.
“We have learned from past cycles that patience can be rewarded,” Weiskopf said. “We nibbled on CRCL when it first came out, but the run-up was too fast. We will be watching for the moat to be built on partnerships and distribution.”
A reminder: CRCL shares opened at $69 (up from the IPO price of $31). Circle stock peaked near $300 later that month but was trading around $134 as of this afternoon.
When the bench of public crypto firms is deep enough, retail and institutional investors will want exposure via index funds, Rasmussen explained — like they do across other markets, from energy to biotech.
“Most investors don’t want to spend time attempting to pick winners and losers,” Rasmussen said. “They just want to own the market.” (I’ve heard that sentiment on the tokens front, too).
And there will, indeed, be winners and losers.
Gemini, in its S-1, noted the “highly competitive industry” in which it operates — adding that DEXs and DAOs “may be able to innovate faster and offer products and services that we do not offer.”
