The cryptocurrency industry’s teenage years were tumultuous, to say the least.
Crypto-native investors, builders and in-crowd stakeholders cycled through booms and busts, chased speculative manias and repeatedly clashed with regulators, all while insisting that a mature, institutional future lay just beyond the next market cycle.
That institutional future is beginning to look less hypothetical. On Wednesday (Jan. 28), Fidelity Investments announced it will launch a stablecoin called the Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD), while OKX and Mastercard also launched a crypto card in the European Economic Area (EEA).
But perhaps the greatest signal is coming from public markets. Traditionally, the crypto firms that came out with initial public offerings (IPOs) were usually easy to categorize into one of two camps: exchanges that made money on trading volume, or miners that monetized cheap electricity and specialized hardware. These companies could generate enormous profits in bull markets, but their business models typically tended to be cyclical, making them uncomfortable fits for long-term institutional investors.
The crypto IPO class of 2025, and the pipeline already visible for 2026, looks materially different. The story of these blockchain businesses, outside of SPAC-driven crypto treasury firms, appears to be the plumbing. Think: custody, payments and stablecoins, compliance, and interoperability.
That public-market shift is increasingly being mirrored in private venture capital markets, too.
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Read also: Stablecoins Drop the Revolution and Enter the System
Infrastructure Over Ideology
The hottest ticket in town may be that of businesses designed to benefit from crypto’s persistence rather than its price spikes. As the blockchain-related IPOs completed in 2025 reveal, alongside several more now filing or confidentially preparing, the center of gravity in digital assets has shifted away from speculation and toward infrastructure.
Crypto-infrastructure firm BitGo, for example, went public last Wednesday (Jan. 22). BitGo shares popped 25% on their debut, although as of reporting they are down by around 27%. BitGo was one of the digital asset companies that last month received conditional approval by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to convert into a bank.
Recent listings of custody providers, stablecoin issuers and trading infrastructure firms have drawn institutional interest precisely because they resemble the picks-and-shovels providers of earlier technology revolutions. Cryptocurrency companies Circle and Figure listed last year and enjoyed a big boost in their initial trading sessions, as did cryptocurrency exchange Bullish which went public in August; and crypto exchange Gemini which listed in September.
According to a Jan. 22 report, Ledger, a French company that makes hardware designed to securely store cryptocurrency, is also planning to go public and working with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and Barclays on a potential U.S. IPO. Ledger would be joining other firms with U.S. IPO plans for this year that include digital asset-focused asset manager Grayscale and crypto exchange Kraken.
This interest in public listings from cryptocurrency infrastructure providers matters because crypto’s previous attempts at public listings were often poorly timed or structurally mismatched with public-market expectations.
Earlier cycles rewarded rapid user growth, token velocity and trading volumes, which can be metrics that collapse quickly when volatility dries up. The new crop of issuers is telling a different story, emphasizing custody, compliance, payments infrastructure and security.
See also: Digital Dollars Keep Getting Stuck Outside the Real Economy
Crypto’s Venture Rebound
The activity in public markets as mirrored in private ones as crypto’s venture capital (VC) deal value surged in 2025. This was not a return to the freewheeling seed frenzy of 2021, but a more selective deployment of capital into companies with established revenue, institutional customers, and clear regulatory strategies.
In dollar terms, the crypto industry received around $19.7 billion in venture capital funding, up from a year earlier, even though deal count slipped 60% as investors targeted fewer companies.
Crypto payments network Mesh on Tuesday (Jan. 27) raised $75 million. The raise underscores growing VC interest in the infrastructure layers that sit beneath consumer-facing crypto applications. Wallet providers, custody firms, compliance tooling, developer platforms and blockchain analytics companies are what have attracted sustained interest, even as funding for consumer token projects remained comparatively muted.
In that sense, the resurgence of VC investment is less a bet on crypto’s novelty than on its normalization. As digital assets inch closer to mainstream finance, the winners are likely to be firms that reduce friction, manage risk and translate crypto’s complexity into services that institutions can actually use.
