When Circle is booming, the assets in the currency circle are "listed in a pile", and the currency circle cannot understand the enthusiasm of the stock market
Original source: Li Xiaoyin, Wall Street
The cryptocurrency market boom is sweeping the global stock market in unexpected ways.
According to media reports, after stablecoin issuer Circle's share price soared 8x in the two weeks following the IPO, several crypto exchanges including Kraken, Gemini, and Bullish are preparing to go public, and OKX, one of the world's top three crypto exchanges, has made it clear that it is considering an IPO in the United States.
The shift in the U.S. policy environment has contributed to this frenzy, with Trump's supportive stance towards the crypto sector and expectations of potential regulatory easing significantly boosting market confidence.
Haider Rafique, chief marketing officer of OKX, said there has been a "significant shift" in the attitude towards cryptocurrencies in the United States since the previous administration: "We would definitely be thinking about future IPOs, and if they go public, it will probably be in the United States."
Rob Hadick, a partner at crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly, commented: "It's unlikely that there will be a better time for an IPO than this, and people are speeding up the timeline."
The crypto boom has shifted to the stock market, and the valuation premium has sparked heated discussions
Unlike the traditional cryptocurrency market, the current boom is more reflected in the performance of the stock market.
Since going public on June 5 with a $31 IPO, Circle's share price has soared to $240 and reached a market capitalization of $58 billion, making it one of the biggest first-day gainers in a billion-dollar IPO in recent years.
MicroStrategy (now Strategy) has become a hot spot in the market by holding Bitcoin. Since Strategy's first Bitcoin purchase in 2020, publicly traded companies around the world have announced funding at least $72 billion for crypto asset purchases, with the majority of transactions taking place in 2025, according to crypto consultancy Architect Partners.
Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at crypto fund manager Arca, noted:
"Investors who don't currently invest in cryptocurrencies are much more interested in cryptocurrencies than actual crypto users. Crypto stocks, or proxy stocks, have performed better than cryptocurrencies themselves, and this has been the case for three or four months."
As of 18 months ago, the crypto industry had a small presence in the stock market. This changed with the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs in early 2024.
The divergence between crypto "primitives" and stock market upstarts emerges
Despite the stock market's enthusiasm for crypto-related businesses, there is a significant split within the investor community.
Traditional crypto investors are skeptical of the current premium phenomenon, arguing that the valuation of publicly traded companies holding crypto assets should not be consistently higher than the value of the asset itself.
"When the premium disappears, investors quickly sell stocks, and these phenomena tend to be short-lived," Dragonfly's Hadick said.
Last week, Ethereum-owning SharpLink Gaming's share price plummeted 70% after it announced that it would allow private placement investors to sell their shares, showing how volatile the market is.
They also have a different view of stablecoins, as stablecoins have a one-to-one exchange rate with the US dollar.
Hadick said crypto investors see Circle's stablecoin as having limited use and being primarily used for trading. In contrast, stock market investors are more optimistic about the future of stablecoins, betting that they could become the main payment instrument in the financial system.
"We're not talking about a growth story now, it's a traditional payments story," Hadick said...... It's a world that the vast majority of crypto people simply don't understand."
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