Going Public Was Crypto's Graduation, Then Gemini Fell 89% and the Class Flunked

For a year, listing on Wall Street was crypto's coming-of-age. Equity would do for companies what ETFs did for coins. Then the class of 2025-26 got graded: Gemini down 89%, BitGo down 77%, Bullish down 71%. The market didn't reject crypto. It rejected crypto companies that couldn't turn a profit.

The 2025-26 crypto IPO class was pitched as the industry's graduation onto Wall Street; by July 2026 Gemini was down 89%, BitGo 77%, and Bullish 71% from their debuts, while the profitable names held

For about twelve months, crypto had a new favorite story about itself: it was growing up. The proof was supposed to be Wall Street. Circle listed. Bullish listed. Gemini, the Winklevoss twins' exchange, priced its Nasdaq debut in September 2025 to real excitement, opening at $37. Figure and BitGo followed into early 2026. And lined up behind them was the most credentialed IPO pipeline the industry had ever assembled: Kraken, Grayscale, Consensys, Ledger, all with bankers hired and filings drafted.

The logic was clean and seductive. ETFs had translated Bitcoin and Ethereum into instruments the largest pools of capital were finally allowed to buy, and the coins had ripped. Public equity, the thinking went, would do the same for the companies. Listing was the graduation ceremony. Crypto was joining the grown-up financial system, one ticker at a time.

Then the class got its grades, and most of it flunked.

By July 2026, Gemini had fallen from its $37 open to around $4.19. That is an 89% collapse in under ten months, and more than 90% from its first-day peak of $45.89. BitGo, the custodian that opened 2026's IPO calendar with a January debut at $22.43, was down 77%. Bullish, which had one of the most euphoric first days in crypto listing history - opening at $90 and briefly touching $118 in August 2025 - was down 71% from that open. Bullish also owns CoinDesk, which means the parent company of crypto's biggest news outlet lost more than two-thirds of its value in under a year. Multiple law firms launched securities class actions against Gemini, alleging its IPO documents hid the true trajectory of the business.

The narrative that Wall Street would validate crypto companies the way it validated the coins was, by any honest reading, dead.

But here is where a lazy version of this story goes wrong, and where the real lesson lives. The market did not reject crypto. It rejected a specific kind of crypto company.

Look at who bled and who did not. The catastrophes - Gemini, BitGo, Bullish - share a profile. They are pure exchanges and custodians whose revenue is levered directly to trading volumes, custody balances, and asset prices. They listed at valuations that quietly assumed the 2025 cycle peak was a permanent baseline. When Bitcoin slid through the first half of 2026 and trading volumes halved, their economics did not fall by half. Operating leverage and multiple compression stack on top of each other, and 89% is what that stack looks like when it collapses. They priced perfection and met a market that was anything but.

Now look at who survived. Circle, down only about 6% from its open and actually up roughly 110% from its IPO offering price, earns money from interest on its stablecoin reserves - real, recurring revenue that does not evaporate when memecoin volume dries up. Figure, the blockchain capital-markets firm that listed alongside Gemini, traded near its opening level, because it posted actual profits: $62 million in 2025 earnings on $432 million of revenue. Even eToro, down 42% and unloved, was genuinely profitable - $82 million in Q1 2026 net income, up 37% year over year. The market punished eToro's crypto exposure but could at least price the earnings underneath it.

That is the whole tell. The companies that got destroyed were the ones selling "the crypto story" with cyclical revenue and no profits. The companies that held were the ones with boring, sticky income Wall Street knew how to value. The premium investors had been paying just to own exposure to the crypto narrative evaporated, and what was left was the same question public markets ask every business: do you make money, reliably, or don't you?

The pipeline got the message. Kraken's parent, Payward, paused its listing in March 2026. Grayscale delayed and may not restart before the fourth quarter. Consensys and Ledger postponed too. The graduation ceremony was called off, or at least indefinitely rescheduled, because the first graduates walked across the stage and straight off a cliff.

None of this means crypto companies cannot be public companies. Circle and Figure are proof they can - if they have a business that works when the market is boring, not just when it is euphoric. What died was the specific belief that a stock ticker was itself the achievement, that going public was the destination rather than a test you still have to pass every quarter. The coins can trade on narrative. The companies, it turns out, have to trade on earnings. That was always going to be true. It just took an 89% drawdown to make everyone say it out loud.