The issuer of USDC, Circle, successfully went public on the US stock market, soaring 168% on its first day and raising $1.1 billion, becoming the first stock of a stablecoin. Gemini quickly followed by submitting its IPO documents. Meanwhile, another trading platform, Bullish, which had previously received little attention, was reported by the media to have secretly submitted a listing application to the SEC.
In the most profitable CEX (Centralized Exchange) sector of the crypto world, Bullish is not a well-known name, but in fact, its "background" is quite impressive.
In 2018, EOS emerged, claiming to be the "terminator" of Ethereum. The company behind it, Block.one, conducted the longest and largest ICO (Initial Coin Offering) in history, raising an astonishing $4.2 billion.
A few years later, as the hype around EOS faded, Block.one "started anew" and turned to create a cryptocurrency trading platform focused on compliance and targeting traditional financial markets—Bullish, which led to the EOS community "kicking it out."
In July 2021, Bullish officially launched. The initial funding included $100 million in cash from Block.one, 164,000 bitcoins (worth about $9.7 billion at the time), and 20 million EOS; external investors added another $300 million, including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, hedge fund mogul Alan Howard, and well-known crypto investor Mike Novogratz.
Calculating this, Bullish's total asset scale at launch exceeded $10 billion, making it extremely luxurious.
Pro "Circle" and anti "Tether," Bullish "aims for compliance"
Bullish's positioning has been clear from the start: scale is not important, but compliance is.
Because Bullish's ultimate goal is not to make a profit in the crypto world, but to become a legitimate trading platform that can go public.
Before officially operating, Bullish reached an agreement with a listed company, Far Peak, to invest $840 million to acquire 9% of the company’s shares and conduct a $2.5 billion merger, thus achieving a backdoor listing and lowering the traditional IPO threshold.
At that time, media reports valued Bullish at $9 billion.
The former CEO of the merged company, Far Peak, Thomas, is now the CEO of Bullish, and he has a strong compliance background: he was previously the Chief Operating Officer and President of the New York Stock Exchange, where he performed excellently; he has established deep connections with Wall Street giants, CEOs, and institutional investors; and he has extensive resources in regulation and capital.
It is worth mentioning that while Farley has not invested in many projects externally, some are quite notable in the crypto space: the Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon, the re-staking protocol ether.fi, and the blockchain media CoinDesk.
In summary, Bullish is the trading platform in the crypto world that most wants to become a "regular army of Wall Street."
However, ideals are rich, and reality is stark. Compliance is much more difficult than they imagined.
The US regulatory attitude has become increasingly tough, and Bullish's original merger listing agreement was terminated in 2022, causing an 18-month listing plan to fall through. Bullish also considered acquiring FTX for rapid expansion, but ultimately did not proceed. Bullish was forced to seek new compliance paths—such as shifting to Asia and Europe.
Bullish team at the Consensus conference in Hong Kong
Bullish also obtained a Type 1 license (for securities trading) and a Type 7 license (for providing automated trading services) from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission at the beginning of this year, as well as a license for virtual asset trading platforms; additionally, Bullish received the necessary licenses for crypto asset trading and custody from the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in Germany.
Bullish has approximately 260 employees worldwide, with more than half based in Hong Kong, and the rest distributed in Singapore, the United States, and Gibraltar.
Another obvious manifestation of Bullish's "aim for compliance" is: pro "Circle," anti "Tether."
On the Bullish platform, the top trading pairs by volume are USDC, rather than the larger circulating and longer-established USDT. This reflects its clear stance on regulatory attitudes.
In recent years, as USDT has faced increasing regulatory pressure from the SEC, its market dominance has begun to wane. On the other hand, USDC, a stablecoin jointly launched by the compliant company Circle and Coinbase, not only successfully went public but also became the "first stock of a stablecoin," gaining favor in the capital markets with excellent stock performance. With good transparency and regulatory adaptability, USDC's trading volume has continued to soar.
According to the latest report released by Kaiko, USDC's trading volume on centralized exchanges (CEX) significantly increased in 2024, reaching $38 billion in March alone, far exceeding the average monthly volume of $8 billion in 2023. Among them, Bullish and Bybit are the two platforms with the largest USDC trading volumes, together accounting for about 60% of the market share.
The "love-hate relationship" between Bullish and EOS
If one were to describe the relationship between Bullish and EOS in one sentence, it would be "the ex and the current."
Although the news of Bullish secretly submitting an IPO application caused the price of A (formerly EOS) to rise by 17%, the fact is that the relationship between the EOS community and Bullish is not good, as Block.one turned its back on EOS and embraced Bullish.
Back in 2017, the public chain sector was in its golden age. Block.one released EOS with a white paper, a super public chain project that shouted "one million TPS, zero fees," attracting global investors in droves. Within a year, EOS raised $4.2 billion through its ICO, breaking industry records and igniting a fantasy of being the "terminator of Ethereum."
However, the dream began quickly and collapsed just as fast. After the EOS mainnet launched, users soon discovered that the chain was not as "invincible" as advertised. While transfers had no fees, users had to stake CPU and RAM, making the process complex and the operational threshold high; node elections were not the "democratic governance" imagined, but were quickly controlled by large holders and exchanges, leading to issues like bribery and vote trading.
But the real reason for EOS's accelerated decline was not just technical issues, but more so the internal resource allocation problems within Block.one.
Block.one originally promised to allocate $1 billion to support the EOS ecosystem, but what it actually did was the complete opposite: it made large purchases of US Treasury bonds, hoarded 160,000 bitcoins, invested in the failed social product Voice, and used funds for stock trading and domain name purchases… The amount actually used to support EOS developers was pitifully small.
At the same time, the company's internal power was highly centralized, with core executives almost entirely composed of Block.one founder BB and his relatives and friends, forming a small circle-like "family business." After 2020, BM announced his departure from the project, which also became a precursor to the complete split between Block.one and EOS.
What truly ignited the anger of the EOS community was the emergence of Bullish.
Block.one founder BB
In 2021, Block.one announced the launch of the crypto trading platform Bullish, claiming to have completed $10 billion in financing, with a luxurious list of investors—PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Wall Street veteran Mike Novogratz, and other top capital supporters. This new platform focuses on compliance and stability, creating a "bridge" for institutional investors in crypto finance.
However, this Bullish has almost no connection to EOS in terms of technology or brand—it does not use EOS technology, does not accept EOS tokens, and does not acknowledge any association with EOS, not even a basic thank you.
For the EOS community, this was akin to a public betrayal: Block.one used the resources accumulated from establishing EOS to embrace a "new love." Meanwhile, EOS was left completely behind.
Thus, the counterattack from the EOS community began.
At the end of 2021, the community initiated a "fork uprising," attempting to sever Block.one's control. The EOS Foundation, as the community representative, began negotiations with Block.one. However, over the course of a month, various proposals were discussed, but no agreement was reached. Ultimately, the EOS Foundation, in conjunction with 17 nodes, revoked Block.one's power status and expelled it from the EOS management team. In 2022, the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) initiated legal action, accusing Block.one of breaching its ecological commitments; in 2023, the community even considered a hard fork to completely isolate Block.one and Bullish's assets.
Related reading: "The Beginning and End of the EOS Node Stopping Block.one Account Release Incident: The Parent Company Kicked Out by the Community."
After the split between EOS and Block.one, the EOS community engaged in a years-long lawsuit over the ownership of the funds raised initially, but so far Block.one still retains ownership and usage rights to the funds.
Therefore, in the eyes of many in the EOS community, Bullish is not a "new project," but more like a symbol of betrayal, and this Bullish that secretly submitted an IPO application is always the "new love" that exchanged their ideals for reality—glamorous, yet shameful.
In 2025, EOS will officially change its name to Vaulta to cut ties with the past, building a Web3 banking business on the foundation of the public chain, while also renaming the token EOS to A.
How much money does the wealthy Block.one actually have?
What we all know is that Block.one raised $4.2 billion in its early days, becoming the largest fundraising event in crypto history. Logically, this funding should have supported the long-term development of EOS, aided developers, promoted technological innovation, and allowed the ecosystem to grow continuously. However, when EOS ecosystem developers pleaded for funding, Block.one only tossed out a $50,000 check—an amount insufficient to pay a Silicon Valley programmer's salary for two months.
"Where did the $4.2 billion go?" the community questioned.
In an email dated March 19, 2019, BM disclosed part of the answer to Block.one shareholders: as of February 2019, Block.one's total assets (including cash and invested funds) amounted to $3 billion. Of this $3 billion, approximately $2.2 billion was invested in U.S. government bonds.
Where did the $4.2 billion go? Generally, it can be summarized in three main directions: $2.2 billion in government bonds: low risk, stable returns, ensuring wealth preservation; 160,000 bitcoins: now worth over $16 billion; and a small amount in stock trading and acquisition attempts: such as the failed Silvergate investment and the purchase of the Voice domain name.
What many people do not know is that EOS's parent company, Block.one, is currently the private company holding the most bitcoins, with a total of 160,000 BTC, which is 40,000 more than the stablecoin giant Tether.
Data source: bitcointreasuries
At the current price of $109,650, these 160,000 BTC are worth approximately $17.544 billion. This means that just from the appreciation of this bitcoin, Block.one has made over $13 billion on paper, about 4.18 times the amount raised during the ICO.
From the perspective of "cash flow is king," Block.one is very successful today, and one could even say it is a more "forward-looking" company than MicroStrategy, making it one of the most profitable "project parties" in crypto history. However, it did not achieve this by "building a great blockchain," but rather by "maximizing the preservation of principal, expanding assets, and exiting smoothly."
This is the ironic and real side of the crypto world: in the crypto space, the one who wins in the end is not necessarily the one with the "best technology" or the "most passionate ideals," but rather the one who understands compliance the best, adapts to circumstances, and excels at retaining money.
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