Peter Thiel-Backed Bullish Is About to IPO. Should You Buy BLSH Stock?

Hoping to follow the blockbuster initial public offerings of peer crypto companies Circle (CRCL) and eToro (TORO), Peter Thiel-backed Bullish is set to make its debut and could start trading as soon as today, Aug. 13. Will Thiel, who had earlier backed retail darling Palantir (PLTR), be proven right again, and should investors buy BLSH stock once it starts trading? 

About Bullish

Founded fairly recently in 2020, with former New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley as its CEO, Bullish is a regulated, institutional-grade cryptocurrency exchange and digital asset infrastructure platform. It supports both spot and derivatives trading, backed by blockchain-powered order systems and a treasury-backed financial model designed for deep liquidity and compliance. It acquired CoinDesk in 2023, a leading media, data, events, and indexes company specializing in the cryptocurrency and digital asset industries.

Earlier aiming for a valuation of $4.2 billion with a price range of $28-$31 a share, Bullish has now raised its IPO size to $990 million. From an earlier offering of 20.3 million shares, the company will now offer 30 million shares in the price range of $32-$33 per share at a valuation of $4.8 billion. Notably, the firm already has some elite backers in the form of Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, BlackRock, ARK, Block.one, and others.

Promising Story With Steady Financials

Bullish has seen impressive growth in its revenue over the past three years. While in 2022 the company reported digital asset sales of $72.9 million, this grew to $250.2 million by 2024. For the first three months of 2025, Bullish’s digital asset sales stood at $80.2 million compared to $80.4 million in the year-ago period.

In terms of the bottom line, Bullish reported a net loss of $349 for Q1 2025 compared to a profit of $105 million.

The prospects of the market in which Bullish operates are well… quite bullish. A 2025 report released by Spherical Insights places the estimated value of the global digital asset trading platform market at roughly $2.5 billion in 2023. Over the coming decade, the same report expects this figure to reach close to $11 billion by 2033. That would represent a compound annual growth rate in the region of 16%, a level that underlines the industry’s strong growth potential.

The underlying momentum, according to the research, stems mainly from two forces. One is the steady rise in participation from retail investors as well as large institutional traders. The other is the growing appetite for access to the most advanced and innovative trading platforms without geographic limitation.

In such an environment, Bullish has certain advantages. It operates a complete range of trading and market intelligence services and is led by a management team with notable industry experience. Its plans for expansion are centered on obtaining further regulatory approvals to enter new regions, developing additional products, evaluating buyout opportunities, and solidifying the links between its trading, data, and media operations.

However, competition is far from limited. Major exchanges such as Coinbase (COIN) and Robinhood (HOOD) continue to hold substantial positions in the market. There is also the matter of Bullish’s status as a foreign private issuer, which permits a lower level of financial disclosure than would be required for a domestic listing. Moreover, the company’s sizable holdings of digital assets can expose its earnings to swings in asset valuations, a factor that could add volatility to results and draw attention to transparency considerations.