Bullish Takes $1.15 Billion in IPO Proceeds via Stablecoins—Mostly on Solana

Publicly traded crypto exchange Bullish (BLSH) received $1.15 billion in proceeds from its recently completed initial public offering (IPO) in stablecoins, the firm announced on Tuesday. 

The Cayman Islands-based firm received more than $1 billion in funds when it completed the sale of its shares at $37 last week. 

Most of those funds are now being held in stablecoins, or crypto tokens pegged to the value of fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar and backed 1:1 by such assets.

“We view stablecoins as one of the most transformative and widespread use cases for digital assets,” said Bullish CFO David Bonanno, in a statement.

“Internally, we leverage them for rapid and secure global fund transfers, especially on the Solana network,” he continued. “We believe our collaborations with the stablecoin issuers represented here, including their listings on our Bullish exchange, demonstrate how the infrastructure and liquidity we’ve built at Bullish helps power their businesses.”

The bulk of the firm’s stablecoins were issued as Circle’s USDC on the Solana blockchain, but it also received other popular stablecoins like PayPal’s PYUSD, Ripple’s RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, and USD1 issued by the President Trump-backed World Liberty Financial. The firm’s USDC and EURC stablecoins are being custodied by Coinbase. 

“Bullish’s use of stablecoins in its IPO merges public market infrastructure with blockchain rails, and highlights Solana’s unique position to power a new era of market efficiency and innovation,” said Solana Foundation President Lily Liu, in a statement.

While stablecoins have been one of the leading adoption drivers during this crypto cycle, most stablecoin market activity takes place on Ethereum—a network that JPMorgan recently said is suited for “meteoric” stablecoin growth in the future. 

At present time, Ethereum holds more than $142 billion in stablecoins compared to nearly $12 billion on Solana’s network, according to data from DefiLlama.

A representative for Bullish did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s question about the firm’s decision to choose Solana for a large portion of its stablecoins, nor its plans for stablecoin use beyond fund transfers. 

Shares of BLSH quickly tripled after hitting the market last week, topping out at $118. Now shares in the firm—which also owns crypto media publication CoinDesk—are trading at about $59, down almost 7% on the day and roughly 50% from its peak.