BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes has predicted an IPO boom in the crypto industry between 2025 and 2027. The listing of USDC stablecoin issuer Circle is the first in a series of IPOs by cryptocurrency companies.
“We've come full circle (circle — a reference to the company's name), a wonderful day, the spirit of ICO 2017 transformed into 2025–2027? Cryptocurrency IPO madness. This is the beginning of the craze,” Hayes wrote on Twitter.
On June 5, Circle ended its first day of trading on the NYSE with a 168% increase over its IPO price. The stock rose from $31 to $83.39. According to Yahoo Finance, the trading volume for the day exceeded 47.1 million shares. Circle's market capitalization at the end of the day was $18.5 billion, while on the day before the IPO, based on the number of shares in circulation, the company was valued at $6.9 billion.
During the first hour after trading began on the NYSE, Circle shares were suspended three times under the LULD (Limit Up-Limit Down) mechanism, which occurs when there are sharp price fluctuations and a surge in trading volume. The same measures were applied, for example, to GameStop (GME) shares, when trading was suspended several times due to the hype.
According to Hayes, the end of the craze will be “a blockbuster similar to the IPO of the EOS crypto project, which will extract a huge amount of capital from fiat and immediately collapse.”
EOS is a blockchain platform from Block.one that raised $4.2 billion during its ICO in 2017–2018. After its launch, the project faced technical and legal problems. In 2019, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined the developers $24 million for an unregistered ICO, and in 2020, a class action lawsuit was filed against Block.one for violating securities laws during the ICO.
In mid-May, EOS rebranded, changing the name of the project to Vaulta and the native token from EOS to A. On June 6, the platform's cryptocurrency is trading at 97% below the peak set in April 2018 during the project's IPO.
In mid-May, American Bitcoin, a mining company created with the participation of the Trump family, announced its intention to go public. To do so, it will undergo a merger. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of the year, with the miner's shares trading on NASDAQ under the ticker ABTC.