Cryptocurrency makes overtures to Wall Street

Welcome to the Major Identity Crisis of Cryptocurrency in 2025. By Prathik Desai Compiled by Block unicorn Preface TRON founder Justin Sun is taking his blockchain empire public through a reverse merger with the NASDAQ-listed toy company SRM Entertainment. Why would someone whose career began by disrupting traditional finance now be holding an IPO prospectus and queuing at Wall Street's doorstep? Welcome to the Major Identity Crisis of Cryptocurrency in 2025. The trend began with Circle. This month, when the stablecoin giant went public, its stock surged 168% on the first day. It was oversubscribed 25 times: the public demanded 85 million shares, while only 34 million were actually issued. Circle's market value now exceeds $33 billion, triple the reported acquisition offer of $9-11 billion from Ripple before its listing. Circle's success not only rewarded early investors but also inspired a group of crypto-native companies to consider entering Wall Street and revive shelved IPO plans. Three days later, Gemini submitted an IPO application. Now, TRON has also announced its listing plans. Circle provided a template proving that traditional markets are willing to pay a high premium for regulated crypto exposure, and mainstream investors are eager for blockchain innovation packaged in a familiar corporate structure. The public has already embraced crypto products delivered through traditional Wall Street channels. Since January 2024, Bitcoin ETF net inflows have exceeded $45 billion. Strategy's stock price is multiple times its Bitcoin holdings: market value around $106 billion, while its Bitcoin holdings are worth about $62 billion. Michael Saylor's Bitcoin bet has inspired more listed companies to follow the treasury investment route. These cases confirm a hypothesis: the fastest path to mainstream acceptance might not be getting the world to adopt self-custodial wallets and use DeFi protocols. Instead, the mass adoption path should directly pass through traditional financial infrastructure, making cryptocurrency accessible through channels people already trust. Look at the adoption mathematics. Traditional finance reaches billions, while global crypto holders are only 560 million. When ETFs introduced Bitcoin into 401(k) retirement plans and pension funds, its mainstream penetration in one year exceeded a decade of "not your keys, not your coins" preaching. Companies long focused on building pure crypto products are now looking at products that can connect two worlds. Circle leverages stablecoins to build digital payment channels and corporate treasury services. Coinbase has transcended its crypto exchange image by building institutional custody and prime brokerage services comparable to traditional banks. The IPO path provides what the crypto ecosystem lacks: using public market capital to fund these related product lines. Need to build enterprise-grade custody solutions? Issue stocks. Want to acquire a traditional fintech company? Use stocks as currency. Planning to expand into regulated lending or investment management? Public market credibility opens doors that native crypto credentials cannot. Why Trust Trumps Ideology Traditional finance's overture also solves one of cryptocurrency's thorniest problems: institutional trust. For years, crypto companies have struggled to bridge the credibility gap that technology innovation cannot cross. When Coinbase went public in 2021, institutions saw it as a risky bet on an emerging asset class. Today, Coinbase is part of the S&P 500, managing billions in institutional assets, symbolizing cryptocurrency's integration into mainstream financial systems. This trust-building mechanism works through multiple channels. SEC regulation provides compliance guarantees that pure crypto investments cannot match. Quarterly earnings calls and audited financial statements offer transparency that community governance forums cannot reach. When pension fund managers can cite S&P ratings and decades of corporate law precedents, cryptocurrency becomes an asset allocation decision, not blind faith. This validation is bidirectional. Wall Street's acceptance of crypto companies provides legitimacy for the entire industry. When BlackRock actively builds crypto infrastructure and Fidelity offers Bitcoin services for millions of retirement accounts, it becomes hard to dismiss blockchain technology as a speculative bubble. Beyond philosophical evolution, there's practical necessity. After FTX's collapse in 2023, crypto venture funding plummeted 65%. When the second-largest exchange was exposed as a house of cards built on customer deposits, investors became cautious about writing checks. Traditional venture capital, once generous to any business plan mentioning "blockchain", quickly dried up. Companies accustomed to investing $50 million in Series A funding found no one listening when explaining basic concepts. Public markets remain open. Institutional investors unwilling to invest in crypto startups are happy to buy stocks of regulated, SEC-compliant crypto companies with audited financial statements and clear business models. This financing shift accelerates strategic transitions to related products. Our Perspective The emerging strategy is to build products that solve real problems, demonstrate product-market fit through crypto-native channels, and then expand through traditional financial infrastructure. This ideological conflict may exist but doesn't necessarily cause problems. Companies that can navigate this transformation will offer DeFi innovations combined with traditional financial reliability. They will provide decentralized advantages to mainstream users who will never manage private keys or understand gas fees, including faster settlements, global accessibility, and programmable money. Crypto's early promise was to completely eliminate intermediaries. But most people still want intermediaries, perhaps just better ones. Intermediaries faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more global than traditional banks, but intermediaries nonetheless. Crypto companies planning to build blockchain empires might not shy away from transcending ideological purity due to funding needs. Instead, they might focus on raising public capital and building infrastructure that brings crypto advantages to the next billion users. From an adoption perspective, this trust-building mechanism seems to be working: traditional paths are accelerating crypto acceptance faster than pure crypto enterprises. Finally, crypto founders who have achieved product-market fit should not fear knocking on Wall Street's door when the time is right. They seem eager to have you join.