Crypto Projects' U.S. Listing Boom: How to Achieve a Reasonable Valuation to Capture Wall Street's Attention?

Author: Paul Veradittakit

Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Key Takeaways

• Crypto IPOs unlock significant value, despite challenges in market pricing.

• The token transparency framework aims to enhance market clarity and attract more institutional capital into the token markets.

• Tokenized stocks are reshaping financial markets by increasing efficiency and expanding global access to capital.

Mispriced Crypto IPOs

Coinbase’s post-listing performance serves as a textbook case, revealing public markets’ difficulty in valuing cutting-edge financial infrastructure innovations. We’ve witnessed COIN surge 52% from its opening price, briefly surpassing a $100 billion valuation, followed by deep corrections as market sentiment and the crypto cycle shifted. Each market turn seems to reprice Coinbase under a new valuation lens, leaving both long-term investors and builders confused.

The Circle IPO is another recent example: despite strong demand for exposure to stablecoins, Circle left $1.7 billion on the table on its first trading day, making it one of the most underpriced IPOs in decades. This isn’t just an anomaly within crypto—it reflects a structural pricing challenge faced by next-generation financial companies entering public markets.

The crypto industry needs more adaptive price discovery mechanisms—ones that can bridge the gap between institutional demand and the true value of platforms across market cycles.

A New Valuation Framework

The crypto market still lacks a standardized disclosure system akin to S-1 filings. Mispriced crypto IPOs demonstrate that when underwriters cannot map tokenomics onto GAAP checklists, they either overvalue due to hype or undervalue out of fear. To fill this void, Pantera Capital’s Cosmo Jiang partnered with Blockworks to launch the “Token Transparency Report”—a 40-metric framework that transforms protocol opacity into IPO-level clarity. The framework requires founders to:

• Report revenue separately by legal entity

• Disclose annotated internal wallet ownership

• Submit quarterly token holder reports (covering treasury, cash flow, and KPIs)

• Reveal details of market maker or CEX partnerships, allowing investors to assess liquidity risks pre-IPO

Why does this framework improve valuations?

• Lower discount rates: Clear circulating supply and unlock data bring market pricing closer to intrinsic value

• Broaden investor base: Institutional investors previously blocked by "black box" protocols can now participate in audited projects

• Regulatory alignment: The SEC’s April 2025 crypto issuance guidance aligns closely with this framework, meaning projects have already completed much of the paperwork when applying—accelerating approval and narrowing the gap between private and public valuations

Ethereum’s latest upgrade perfectly illustrates how blockchains differ from traditional firms: each new block burns a portion of ETH (similar to automatic share buybacks), while stakers earn 3–5% yields (akin to stable dividends). The right approach is to treat “issuance minus burn” as free cash flow, discounted to derive valuations consistent with on-chain economics—not just balance sheet figures. But scarcity is only the beginning; on-chain activity completes the story: real-time data such as stablecoin movements across wallets, bridging activity, and DeFi collateral flows are the fundamental supports behind token prices.

A comprehensive valuation method should anchor on traditional corporate cash flows, using on-chain income (staking yield minus fee burns) as a core verification element. By continuously monitoring staking yields, real-time traffic metrics, and scenario analysis, valuation models can stay current—only then can they attract traditional capital into the ecosystem.

Stock Tokenization Enhances Trading Experience

Pantera Capital has backed the RWA (real-world assets) tokenization space through investments in Ondo Finance. Recently, we co-launched a $250 million fund with Ondo to further drive RWA development. With Robinhood announcing its entry into stock tokenization, the sector is rapidly maturing.

Last week, Robinhood launched tokenized stocks on its platform, highlighting a central tension in this emerging financial technology: permissionless vs. permissioned finance, and DeFi’s future role.

Permissionless tokenized stocks allow anyone to trade anytime on public blockchains, opening U.S. capital markets to global investors—but may also become breeding grounds for insider trading and manipulation. In contrast, KYC-based permissioned models preserve market fairness but undermine the core advantage of global accessibility offered by tokenized stocks.

We believe stock tokenization will reshape DeFi. DeFi’s mission has always been to build open, programmable financial primitives, but until now it has primarily served crypto-native tokens. Stock tokenization unlocks entirely new use cases. The structure of tokenized stocks will determine where the next wave of users and liquidity lands:

In the permissioned model, traditional players like Robinhood—who own user relationships—dominate the front end, leaving DeFi protocols to compete only for back-end liquidity.

In the permissionless model, DeFi protocols can control both users and liquidity, building truly open global markets.

Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 upgrade exemplifies this vision: by staking the protocol token, anyone can configure oracles, leverage, and funding parameters to create perpetual markets for tokenized stocks. While Robinhood and Coinbase have launched stock perpetuals in the EU, their models remain more closed and less composable than DeFi. If the open path prevails, DeFi will become the default venue for programmable, borderless financial engineering.

Bitcoin Market Cap Surpasses Google

In 2025, Bitcoin rose to become the world’s fifth-largest asset by market cap at $2.128 trillion, surpassing Google. Driven by institutional adoption, spot Bitcoin ETF approvals, and clearer regulation, Bitcoin broke past $106,000. This milestone proves that programmable money has finally found a clear product-market fit.

Looking Ahead

As Dan Morehead noted, cryptocurrency investing offers returns unmatched by traditional markets. This is precisely why traditional public markets and the crypto sector are accelerating their financial and structural convergence:

• Digital asset treasuries and crypto IPOs provide public market exposure to crypto finance

• Stablecoins and tokenization use crypto technology to optimize traditional market structures

Ten years from now, crypto will no longer be a niche topic discussed only among tech enthusiasts—it will be foundational technology underpinning everyday life.