The Breakdown - Crypto Froth Watch: Bullish IPO Pops 200% as Bitcoin and Ethereum Near Highs

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Bitcoin hits $124K and Ethereum surges close to a new record as altcoin mania returns. Meanwhile, institutional exchange Bullish rockets 200% in its IPO before plunging—raising questions about froth in the crypto cycle. NLW unpacks the wild price action, the macro forces driving the rally, and whether this bull run is overheating or just getting started. Brought to you by: Grayscale offers more than 20 different crypto investment products. Explore the full suite at grayscale.com. Invest in your share of the future. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal. To learn more, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Grayscale.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.grayscale.com//?utm_source=blockworks&utm_medium=paid-other&utm_campaign=brand&utm_id=&utm_term=&utm_content=audio-thebreakdown)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast: https://pod.link/1438693620 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBreakdownBW Subscribe to the newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thebreakdown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the discussion: https://discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8 Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownBW

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the Big Picture Power Shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, August 14th, and today we got some crypto bubble talk. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, Bitcoin is at an all-time high, altcoins are ripping, and crypto is taking over the public markets. The question is, are we starting to get a little overheated?

This crypto cycle has been different from the start, and as we get deeper into the bull run, it's becoming even more strange. The cycle, of course, started with the institutional narrative. Michael Saylor had already been smashing the buy button for years, but the news that BlackRock was applying to launch a Bitcoin ETF, dragged the crypto market out of the depths of winter. As the cycle progressed, we got pension funds. sovereign wealth funds, and corporates all starting to buy in. Then came the crypto treasury companies with a wide range of, let's call it, seriousness and legitimacy. By this stage, even old head tradfai traders have Bitcoin and Ethereum sitting in their dashboards. To their eyes, they're watching

for the first time as crypto markets move 5 or 10% in a day, alongside various equity and commodity trades that aren't offering anywhere near the same short-term opportunity. And for those who want even more volatility, we have a range of early-stage crypto treasury companies and I IPOs taking off like a rocket. And it is in that context that institutional exchange Bullish had its extremely frothy IPO yesterday. The private IPO price ended up being $37, about 15% higher than the top of the range reported earlier in the week. That reporting, by the way, was about bullish upsizing their offer and raising the price by 60% due to a massive wave of demand. Bloomberg later reported that the deal was 20 times oversubscribed. So what do you think

happened? The first trade crossed the tape at $90 yesterday. who got in at the IPO price was immediately up 143% and the frenzy began. The stock traded up to 118 in the first 10 minutes before going down only for the rest of the day. It closed a little under $68. That's still a gain of 83% for anyone that got in at the IPO price, but the retail traders who bought the hype throughout the day got smoked. The chart frankly looked like a meme coin launch, but this was a multi-billion dollar IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. Still, even with the stock coming down in the afternoon, Buller still ended the day with a $10 billion valuation. Keep in mind, Circle's failed SPAC deal from last cycle was set to go at $9 billion, and that valuation was viewed

as very optimistic right up until the stock actually started trading in June. Circle is now at around a $38 billion market cap, and they're issuing shares into these valuations in order to monetize the froth. Eitoro's IPO went out at a $5.6 billion valuation, the company has now dropped to a $4 billion dollar market cap. The difference between E. Toro and Circle and Bullish is that Bullish doesn't have a significant presence in the U.S., and it's frankly a little unclear how much business they're actually doing. Daniel Pico asked, who trades on Bullish? I've yet to meet or see any content from someone who does, and somehow they're raising $1.1. Now, maybe Bullish has an entirely institutional client base, but still, they only generated $62 million in revenue in Q1. That's set against $2 billion in revenue for

Coinbase during the same quarter. Now, this is obviously not an apples-to-apples comparison, and there are tons of viable institutional exchanges at that level. But for a little bit of comparative perspective, Bullish now has a market cap 1-8th the size of Coinbase with just 3% as much revenue. There are also other big question marks about the company. Bullish was originally a subsidiary of Block 1, the same company that organized the largest ICO ever with EOS in 2018, raising back then 4.2 billion. Nothing much ever came from EOS, and Block 1 settled a class action. lawsuit from ICO buyers for $22,000,000 in late 2022. Lex Sokol and the managing partner at Generative Ventures suggested that none of that history

matters in the slightest, commenting, memory in the crypto markets among financial participants is extremely short and fairly mercenary. Still, bullish IPO disclosures contain a few big issues. They acknowledge that their past as a Block 1 subsidiary could make it difficult to obtain licensing in the U.S. Block 1 settled registration violations with the SEC in 2019 for a $24 million fine. Shareholder concentration also seems a little high. Block 1 CEO Brendan Blumer is expected to own 30% after IPO dilution, and bullish board member, Koki Yuwan, is expected to own 27%. Now, obviously, we don't know how this all works out. It is certainly possible that bullish takes advantage of this new capital to scale their exchange and become a major pillar of the institutional side of the industry.

However, you have to think that an IPO with that many interesting questions around it, being this hot is a signpost. The stock moved like a meme coin launch and it looks a lot like money was made by dumping on retail. Adam Taggart, the host of thoughtful money and an investor who has seen a few hype cycles posted, quote, crypto exchange named Bullish pops as much as 200% on its IPO. It's now a $10 billion company. Sure, no signs of froth here. Prop trader Stephen Spencer wrote, No better way to put in a short-term top than to launch an IPO named Bullish and have it 3x before reversing. Look, I hope every crypto IPO does great, and then the companies go rock and roll with their new capital. This is not an indictment of bullish at all. Also, when you got a frothy market,

it's a completely reasonable strategy to go take advantage of it. It just certainly suggests to me, more so than things we've seen so far, that things are really getting at least a little bit overheated. Today's episode of The Breaktown is brought to you exclusively by Grayscale. Grayscale is almost certainly a name you know. They've been offering exposure to crypto for over a decade now and offer over 20 different crypto investment products ranging from single asset to diversified to thematic exposure to crypto and the broader crypto industry. They have long been innovators at the intersection of tradfi and crypto. And one of the benefits for a lot of us is that grayscale products are available right through your existing brokerage or IRA. Now, of course, investing involves risk,

including possible loss of principle. For more information and important disclosures, visit grayscale.com. Go to grayscale.com to explore their full suite of crypto investment products and invest in your share of the future. Now, the other big news of the day was a fresh Bitcoin all-time high. Bitcoin got to $124,000 in change yesterday before rolling over and heading back down below $1.22. The move wasn't a breakout so Bitcoin didn't head into price discovery mode. Unlike earlier in the year, this isn't Bitcoin punching to new heights on the back. of a bullish narrative or some idiosyncratic driver. This was an evening rally with the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ also hitting new highs. For many, the current market conditions are about

people increasingly using stocks in Bitcoin as a store of value. It's probably no coincidence that these assets saw new all-time highs the same day that U.S. national debt reached $37 trillion for the first time. That's a 30% increase for those keeping track from the beginning of 2020. Ryan Lee, the chief analyst at Bitjet, believes that Bitcoin's rise is directly correlated to the U.S. debt. He said, ultimately this will impact the American monetary system as a considerable amount of cash will be deployed into servicing this debt. The more the debt grows, the higher the likelihood of Bitcoin soaring to new highs. Lee also thinks the U.S. government could begin exploring Bitcoin as a way to fix its massive national debt. Some of the macro watchers, meanwhile, picked up on a renewed

credit cycle out of China as a medium-term driver. Julian Biddle, the head of macro at Global Macro investor wrote, now that bond yields in China have come lower, the next place to look for additional liquidity is credit creation. Don't get me wrong, the drop in bond yields alone is a massive ease of financial conditions in the East and a huge tail one for global growth looking ahead. But the next place to watch is here, and credit is clearly flowing. Think of it like this. If credit is fuel for the economic engine, the credit impulse tells you whether more or less fuel is being added. A positive credit impulse means credit growth is accelerating, more money is being lent into the system, which tends to boost economic activity. A negative impulse means credit growth

is slowing or shrinking, which usually drags on growth. According to GMI's indicators, the credit impulse out of China is at its most positive since June of 2023. All major economies barring Japan now have a positive credit impulse. Biddle added, historically this has been a powerful leading indicator of global cyclical trends, especially for commodities, emerging markets, and overall industrial demand. Bullish. Andre Drogroche, the European head of research at Bitwise, commented, fact check, true. Chinese credit impulse is accelerating, which tends to lead to more positive surprises out of China. Remember that global money supply is at an all-time high already. Now add potential Fed rate cuts and further re-acceleration in U.S. money supply growth. Bullish. Capital flows, though,

warned that it isn't as straightforward as rate cuts being supported for Bitcoin, writing cuts or hikes by the Fed are not inherently bullish or bearish for the credit cycle. It's all about how these relate to underlying growth and inflation. If you can understand this relationship in positioning, you can know when to exit the train before the bare market. Now, his analysis ended up concluding that this time rate cuts would fuel growth in inflation. but we might get to a point soon where that's no longer true, with Flows adding, just wait till they cut rates and Bitcoin goes off a cliff. We'll really mess with people who don't get macro liquidity.

For others more zoomed in on the technicals, the short-term play is a lot more clear. Don CryptoTrades wrote, Bitcoin is now taken out the large liquidity cluster at the 120K region, a level we were looking for after taking out the liquidity below 115,000. Bitcoin is still range-bound currently, and we will need to either break out into price discovery or continue to go sideways to build up more position on both sides. no major liquidity cluster anywhere in close proximity right now to go off.

Focus lies on all coins for many market participants. Now, that all coin focus is clear wherever you look. Tom Lee is on CNBC declaring that Ethereum is the biggest macro trade of the next decade. Alicia Katz of Euler Finance reported, my bank guy just asked me if I wanted to buy some Ethereum-adjacent thing. Dude, my whole life is Ethereum-adjacent. I'm overexposed. Please, talk to me about oil or something.

Google searches for the term Altcoin are now at their highest level since 2021, and Ethereum searches have hit a two-year peak. Yesterday's price action saw Ethereum fall short of a new all-time high by a couple of hundred bucks. However, unlike Bitcoin, this is the first time all cycle that Ethereum has come anywhere close to the 2021 high. Now, as much as people want to latch on to discussions of stable coins being bullish for Ether, or this being the catch-up trade, it's pretty clear that that's not the main driver for price at the moment. Ethereum has almost doubled since Tom Lee declared he was going full Michael Saylor as the new chairman of Bitmine. And since then, the man has followed through.

The Ethereum Treasury Company now owns 1% of total supply around $5 billion worth. On Tuesday, Bitmine declared they were raising another $24.5 billion through stock sales to fund their continued Ethereum purchases. The fundraising won't happen all at once, but it sets a market expectation that Lee will continue to smash the buy button for the foreseeable future. Blockworks Mike I belito noted that the ratio of trading volumes for crypto treasury companies were moving in lockstep with the ETH Bitcoin ratio. Writing, this is the strongest argument I've seen that Bitcoin is not, in fact, a special

snowflake, and it was mostly just sailor all along. Even if you're a staunch Bitcoin maxi, this price action must make you think a little bit. Now, one interesting point is that the price action is not just Tom Lee leaning into the green button day and night. Buyers are rushing to the Ethereum ETFs with record amounts of cash. The products saw all-time high inflows above a billion dollars on Monday, followed up by another half billion on Tuesday and $730 billion on Wednesday. By contrast, the Bitcoin ETFs have only gathered $330 billion worth of inflows so far this week. The point is that Tom Lee isn't pushing the market up by himself. He may be setting the narrative, but there are big institutional traders that are getting on board. So what do people think?

Are we getting overheated or is this enthusiasm still healthy? That's where the debate is at the moment. Bob Lucas wrote, don't overthink a bull market. The market does the work. Stick with what has attention and in a good trend. Going forward, overbought assets are more likely to stay well overbought. Dips will be more violent, but shorter lived. Cryptotrater Yele noted that the hour is getting pretty late if the four-year cycle holds. They wrote, the previous cycles both lasted 1,064 days, if that pattern repeats, were about 60 days away from a Bitcoin top. Makes sense with all coins coming back to life. They probably have another 90 to 100 days left to run if it plays out the same as previous cycles. Then again, in so many ways, this is a different cycle. Institutions are here,

regulation is happening, so I don't know, man. All I know is that an IPO called bullish, with unclear business prospects popped 200% in a day. And if that doesn't scream crypto cycle, I don't know what does. For now, that's going to do it for today's breakdown. Appreciate you listening, as always. And until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.