Remember when your crypto-bro friend kept saying “this is the future of finance” while you rolled your eyes? Well, plot twist: they might have been onto something.
Bullish Exchange just pulled off what might be the most “hold my beer” moment in Wall Street history. They raised $1.15 billion in their IPO – but here’s the kicker – they did it entirely in stablecoins. Not dollars. Not euros. Digital money that lives on blockchains.
Think of it like this: instead of getting paid in cash for selling lemonade, you got paid in gift cards that are somehow worth exactly the same as cash but work way faster. Except this lemonade stand is now worth over a billion dollars and trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
The Stablecoin Shopping Spree
Bullish didn’t just pick one digital currency – they went full buffet style. They collected USDC, EURC, Ripple’s RLUSD, PayPal’s PYUSD, and a bunch of others with names that sound like someone fell asleep on a keyboard. Ten different stablecoins in total, because apparently when you’re making history, why not make it complicated?
Most of these transactions happened on Solana, which has become the cool kid blockchain that everyone’s talking about. Solana’s stablecoin market has exploded from $5.1 billion to nearly $12 billion this year – a 135% jump that would make any stock investor weep with envy.
Why This Actually Matters
Here’s where it gets interesting beyond the “wow, crypto” factor. Traditional IPO settlements take days and involve a bunch of banks passing money around like a game of financial hot potato. Stablecoins? They settle in minutes, cost less, and work 24/7 because blockchains don’t take weekends off.
Bullish’s CFO David Bonanno basically said they use stablecoins internally because they’re faster and more secure for moving money globally. Translation: even the finance guys are admitting this stuff actually works.
The Ripple Effect (Pun Intended)
The crypto world is having a collective “I told you so” moment. Ripple congratulated Bullish for being the first to bring IPO settlement “onchain” – which is crypto-speak for “we did this on the blockchain instead of through traditional banking.”
Coinbase, which is storing some of the proceeds, tweeted that “stablecoins are just better” – faster, cheaper, and more global. When a publicly traded company starts talking like a crypto Twitter account, you know something’s shifting.
What’s Next?
This isn’t just a one-off stunt. Stablecoin volumes hit $6.3 billion in February, and analysts think we could see $1 trillion annually by 2030. That’s not “maybe someday” money – that’s “disrupting traditional finance” money.
Companies like Stripe are building blockchain payment systems, and tokenization firms are integrating stablecoin infrastructure into capital markets. The future your crypto friend kept rambling about? It’s not coming – it’s here, wearing a suit and trading on the NYSE.
So the next time someone says crypto is just internet funny money, you can point to Bullish and say: “Actually, it’s $1.15 billion of very serious internet money.”