Behind the glamorous billion-dollar IPO is the shattered dream of the EOS community in the capital game.

Text: EeeVee, Jia Liu, BlockBeats

Editor: Kaori

On August 12, following Coinbase, the second cryptocurrency exchange will officially land on the New York Stock Exchange - Bullish plans to raise approximately $990 million through an initial public offering.

On the surface, this is just another routine appearance in the cryptocurrency industry. In the past six months, the impressive performances of IPOs from companies like Circle and Figma, as well as Coinbase's inclusion in the S&P 500, have already whetted the appetite of the US stock market for cryptocurrency companies.

The bullish debut seems to continue this trend, and it may even be the most flamboyant one yet. This exchange, which has $3 billion in assets, has not only received strong support from top investors like Peter Thiel, Alan Howard, and SoftBank but has also acquired the crypto media giant CoinDesk, firmly holding the industry's most influential "microphone." Its CEO, Tom Farley, has even served as the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

The strong background and aura have made investors' demand for Bullish's IPO "especially strong," leading Bullish to raise its fundraising scale from 629 million dollars to 990 million dollars on the eve of the IPO.

Beneath Bullish's glamorous resume lies a past capable of stirring memories in the crypto community: the whereabouts of massive funding, the rift between the community and capital, and a forsaken public chain – EOS.

Li Xiaolai, the "evangelist" of EOS, once wrote in his WeChat Moments on August 10, 2018, "Let’s revisit EOS in seven years." Ironically, what the community saw seven years later was not the growth of EOS, but the glory of Bullish ringing the bell – a company that has nothing to do with EOS.

$4.2 billion betrayal

If I had to describe the relationship between Bullish and EOS in one sentence, it would be - exes and current partners, mutually understanding yet unable to sit together again.

After the news of Bullish secretly submitting an IPO application broke, the price of EOS tokens surged by 17%, creating an illusion of rekindled romance. However, in the eyes of the EOS community, this increase felt more like irony, as the former operator Block.one has long turned its back and embraced Bullish, leaving EOS behind — and at the cost of its decline.

The story begins in 2017. At that time, the public blockchain track was in its golden age, white papers could serve as entry tickets, and visions were the best financing tools. Block.one launched EOS with the grand claim of "one million TPS and zero fees," attracting global investors to rush in.

In 2018, it raised $4.2 billion through an ICO, setting a new financing record in the cryptocurrency industry, and EOS was also crowned with the title of "Ethereum Killer."

However, the myth collapsed faster than expected. Shortly after the mainnet went live, users discovered a chasm that was difficult to cross between reality and the white paper: transfers required CPU and RAM staking, with a cumbersome process and high thresholds; node elections were not the "decentralized democracy" that was anticipated, but quickly devolved into a game of ballot boxes for big players and exchanges.

Technical defects are merely superficial; the deeper cracks stem from uneven resource allocation.

Despite Block.one's commitment to allocate $1 billion to support the EOS ecosystem, out of the $4.2 billion in financing, $2.2 billion was ultimately used to purchase U.S. Treasury bonds to secure low-risk returns, while also being used for stock trading, acquiring SilverGate (which went bankrupt in 2023), and other investment attempts such as purchasing the Voice domain.

The funds that truly flow into the EOS developer ecosystem are embarrassingly scarce.

The last straw that broke the patience of the EOS community was the debut of Bullish in 2021. Block.one announced the launch of this brand new cryptocurrency trading platform, with a financing scale of up to $1 billion, yet it has no connection to the EOS technology system—without using the EOS chain, not supporting EOS tokens, not acknowledging any relationship with EOS, and not even a symbolic thank you.

In the eyes of the EOS community, this is a blatant betrayal: Block.one raised huge sums of money with EOS, yet started anew and made a glamorous turnaround at the peak. EOS was left behind, losing its original resources and spotlight.

After that, the community launched multiple counterattacks, attempting to reclaim funds and governance rights through negotiations and lawsuits. Although Block.one was eventually ousted from the EOS management, the ownership and control of the funds remained firmly in the hands of Block.one.

In the eyes of those old users who have experienced the highs and lows of EOS, Bullish has never been a new project unrelated to them, but a coronation exchanged with their ideals — magnificent, expensive, yet embarrassing.

Bullish financing 1 billion new starting point

Born out of the shattered dreams of EOS, Bullish initially received support from Block.one with a cash injection of 100 million dollars.

At the same time, it has also attracted a host of well-known investors such as Peter Thiel and Alan Howard (investors in FTX and Polygon), as well as top venture capital firms like Galaxy Digital, DCG, and SoftBank to join the investment camp, making the lineup quite luxurious.

This gave Bullish an initial capital of up to 1 billion dollars early on, a figure far exceeding its competitor Kraken, which only had 65 million dollars in its seed and Series A funding rounds.

Since 2021, Bullish's core business has revolved around its exchange. With its innovative hybrid liquidity model (a combination of CLOB and AMM), Bullish can provide low trading spreads in high liquidity environments while maintaining stable market depth in low liquidity environments.

This technological innovation quickly gained favor among institutional clients, allowing Bullish to successfully become the fifth largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.

While steadily growing its core exchange business, Bullish acquired the world-leading crypto media platform CoinDesk in 2023, further consolidating its influence in the industry. CoinDesk's monthly unique visitors reached 4.96 million in 2024.

Bullish has also launched CoinDesk Indices and acquired CCData in 2024, leveraging the strengths of both in data services to help its institutional clients track the performance of digital assets and provide market data insights.

In addition, Bullish has established a venture capital division - Bullish Capital. Through this business, Bullish is able to invest capital into crypto innovation projects, which not only brings potential capital returns to Bullish but also helps it maintain its industry-leading position and achieve diversified layout. Currently, Bullish Capital has invested in several well-known crypto projects including Ether.fi, Babylon, and Wingbits.

In terms of financial performance, Bullish's current revenue sources are still relatively singular, with spot trading income from its exchange accounting for 70% to 80% of total revenue.

According to the prospectus, Bullish reported a net loss of $349 million in the first quarter of 2025, which was primarily attributed to a significant decline in the fair value of the cryptocurrency assets held by the company, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

In terms of other income, Coindesk's revenue saw significant growth. In the first quarter of 2025, CoinDesk's subscription revenue reached 20 million dollars, an increase of over 100% compared to 9 million dollars in the same period of 2024.

This growth is partly due to the $9 million in sponsorship revenue generated by the Consensus Hong Kong 2025 conference held in Hong Kong in February 2025.

Compared to its main competitors Coinbase and Kraken, Bullish's revenue and profits are somewhat inferior. Since 2022, Coinbase's revenue has consistently remained more than 20 times that of Bullish. Furthermore, Kraken's total revenue of $1.5 billion in 2024 far exceeds Bullish's $214 million during the same period.

In terms of business data, Bullish's spot trading volume has shown impressive growth, with a trading volume of $79.9 billion in the first quarter of 2025, even slightly surpassing Coinbase.

This trading volume is comparable to leading exchanges, but the revenue is significantly lagging, mainly due to Bullish actively lowering the trading spreads.

"The strategic measures to tighten spreads have strengthened our competitive position and captured a larger market share," according to the prospectus, in 2024 Bullish's market share in global BTC and ETH spot trading volumes increased by 10% and 37%, respectively, and in 2023, they increased by 31% and 189%, respectively.

However, the prospects of this strategy, which relies on compressing spreads to expand market share, are not optimistic.

On one hand, as institutional investors gradually enter the market, it matures, and trading becomes more concentrated in leading assets like BTC, leading to narrowed volatility.

On the other hand, the launch of ETFs has further intensified competition among exchanges. These changes will compress the market's trading spreads, thereby affecting Bullish's profitability and competitive advantage.

In the face of increasingly fierce market competition, Bullish's competitive strategy is similar to that of leading exchanges like Coinbase - expanding the second growth curve through the derivatives market and acquisitions:

"We expect to meet the ongoing demand for stable, high-value institutional clients by expanding our products, especially options products, to achieve growth. We will continue to leverage our scale, assets, and expertise to acquire companies that align with our business lines."

A valuation of 4.8 billion, is it "low-key" or is there another motive?

The reason why Bullish is confident in using huge capital for acquisitions in the future is largely due to that fundraising event that has gone down in the history of cryptocurrency - in 2018, Block.one raised 4.2 billion dollars through the EOS ICO.

In addition to allocating a large amount of funds to stable U.S. Treasury bonds and sporadic equity investments, Block.one also heavily invested in 160,000 Bitcoins in the early stages.

With this move, it has become the largest private company in the world by the amount of cryptocurrency held, surpassing stablecoin giant Tether by a full 40,000 coins.

As of the first quarter of 2025, Bullish's balance sheet also appears substantial: total assets exceed $3 billion, including 24,000 bitcoins (approximately $2.8 billion), 12,600 ethers, and $418 million in cash and stablecoins.

In contrast, Coinbase had only 11,776 bitcoins in reserve in the second quarter of the same year, with a market value of about 1.3 billion US dollars—this means that in terms of BTC holdings, Bullish is almost twice that of Coinbase.

The thickness of this asset makes Bullish appear somewhat "low-key" in the face of a $4.8 billion IPO valuation. On August 11, the company significantly raised its issuance plan at the last moment—adjusting the pricing range per share from $28-31 to $32-33, and expanding the issuance scale from 20.3 million shares to 30 million shares—directly responding to the enthusiastic market demand.

According to the prospectus, BlackRock and ARK Investment Management will subscribe to $200 million worth of shares at the IPO issuance price, fueling the market's enthusiasm.

But behind the enthusiasm lies another set of rules. This IPO has less than 15% of its shares circulating, with the vast majority still firmly held by major shareholders and early investors. Low circulation means scarcity, and scarcity means the "buying frenzy" that may occur on the first day, which is undoubtedly tempting for short-term investors.

As Matt Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, commented on the Bullish IPO: "Bankers are more willing to leave some room in valuations, to raise them on a low valuation basis, rather than pricing too high from the start, which would instead dampen market enthusiasm."

However, the other side of low circulation is a potential selling pressure time bomb. Once the lock-up period ends, if major shareholders and early investors choose to cash out, the market is likely to experience a sudden increase in liquidity and a chain reaction of falling stock prices.

The script-like encrypted market has been seen too many times in this cycle.

It is also worth noting that this is not Bullish's first attempt to enter the capital market. Back in 2021, during the peak of the crypto bull market, it planned to go public with a valuation of $9 billion by merging with the SPAC company Far Peak Acquisition Corporation. At that time, regulatory uncertainty and market volatility hit the plan hard, causing it to come to a sudden halt in 2022.

Now, Bitcoin is once again challenging the historical high of $120,000. Crypto companies like Circle have tested the temperature of the capital markets with successful IPOs, while Bullish, with a valuation nearly halved and a more refined strategy, is making another attempt at the New York Stock Exchange.

Will this combination of "valuation compression + circulation tightening + bull market timing" allow Block.one's already substantial book assets to add another impressive appreciation?

However, for investors who are aware of the EOS story, there may be a more important revelation – do not love such companies too long, lest the final outcome repeats the old dream of the EOS community's fate.