USDC issuer Circle successfully went public on the U.S. stock market, with its stock surging 168% on its first trading day, raising $1.1 billion and becoming the first public company in the stablecoin sector. Gemini followed closely behind by filing for an IPO as well. Meanwhile, another relatively under-the-radar trading platform, Bullish, was reported by media to have secretly submitted a listing application to the SEC.

In the highly lucrative centralized exchange (CEX) sector of the crypto space, Bullish is not a widely recognized name; however, it has quite a prominent background.

In 2018, EOS made a grand entrance, heralded as the "Ethereum killer." The company behind it, Block.one, capitalized on the hype to conduct the longest and largest initial coin offering (ICO) in history, raising an astounding $4.2 billion.

A few years later, as EOS's popularity waned, Block.one pivoted by launching a new regulated cryptocurrency exchange aimed at the traditional financial market — Bullish. This move led to Block.one being ostracized by the EOS community.

In July 2021, Bullish officially launched. Its initial funding included: $100 million in cash contributed by Block.one, 164,000 Bitcoin (worth approximately $9.7 billion at the time), and 20 million EOS tokens. External investors also injected an additional $300 million, including notable figures such as PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, hedge fund titan Alan Howard, and renowned crypto investor Mike Novogratz.

By these calculations, Bullish started operations with a total asset base exceeding $10 billion, an exceptionally impressive scale.

Closer to "Circle," Distanced from "Tether": Bullish Pursues Compliance

Bullish’s positioning was clear from the very beginning: scale isn’t everything, but compliance is key.

This is because Bullish’s ultimate goal isn’t to maximize profit in the crypto world, but to become a fully regulated exchange that can go public.

Before commencing operations, Bullish reached an agreement with a publicly traded company, Far Peak, investing $840 million to acquire a 9% stake in the company and initiating a $2.5 billion merger. This strategy allowed Bullish to achieve a "backdoor" route to public listing, thereby avoiding traditional IPO hurdles.

At the time, media reports speculated that Bullish's valuation was around $9 billion.

The CEO of the merged company Far Peak, Thomas, is now the CEO of Bullish. He has an exceptionally strong compliance background: he was previously the Chief Operating Officer and President of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), where he achieved outstanding performance; he has built deep ties with Wall Street's heavyweights, CEOs, and institutional investors; and he has extensive resources in the regulatory and capital spheres.

It’s worth noting that while Farley hasn’t overseen many external investments and acquisitions at Bullish, the ones they’ve made have been significant within the crypto community. These include Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon, re-staking protocol ether.fi, and blockchain media platform CoinDesk.

All in all, it can be said that Bullish is one of the crypto platforms most determined to become the "Wall Street elite" of the cryptocurrency space.

But the ideal is ambitious, while reality is harsh. Compliance has proven to be much tougher than they anticipated.

The increasingly stringent regulatory stance in the United States led to Bullish’s original merger and public listing agreement falling through in 2022, effectively derailing its 18-month IPO plan. Bullish also considered acquiring FTX to achieve rapid expansion, but that plan also fell apart. Now, Bullish has been forced to seek new compliance pathways—such as pivoting to Asia and Europe.

Bullish team at the Consensus conference in Hong Kong

Earlier this year, Bullish secured a range of regulatory licenses from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, including a Type 1 license (for dealing in securities), a Type 7 license (for providing automated trading services), and a virtual asset trading platform license. Additionally, Bullish obtained the necessary licenses for cryptocurrency trading and custody from Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin).

Bullish currently employs about 260 people globally, with more than half based in Hong Kong. The rest are spread across Singapore, the United States, Gibraltar, and other locations.

Bullish’s "compliance-first" ethos is also evident in its approach to stablecoins: favoring "Circle" over "Tether."

On the Bullish platform, the top few stablecoin trading pairs by volume are all USDC, rather than USDT, despite the latter having a larger circulation and longer history. This strategy reflects Bullish's clear alignment with a pro-regulatory stance.

In recent years, as USDT continues to face mounting regulatory pressure from the U.S. SEC, its market dominance has started to waver. On the other hand, USDC, a stablecoin jointly launched by compliant companies Circle and Coinbase, not only successfully went public on the U.S. stock market but also gained recognition as the first "stablecoin stock," garnering significant attention from the capital markets with its strong stock performance. Thanks to its high transparency and regulatory compatibility, USDC's trading volume has been skyrocketing.

According to the latest report released by Kaiko, USDC's trading volume on centralized exchanges (CEX) saw a significant uptick in 2024, reaching $38 billion in March alone—far higher than the $8 billion monthly average in 2023. Among these, Bullish and Bybit are the two platforms with the highest USDC trading volumes, collectively accounting for approximately 60% of the market share.

The "Love-Hate Relationship" Between Bullish and EOS

To sum up the relationship between Bullish and EOS in one sentence: it's like that of an ex and a current partner.

Although EOS's token price surged 17% after the rumor broke that Bullish had secretly filed for an IPO, the truth is that the relationship between the EOS community and Bullish is far from harmonious. After abandoning EOS, Block.one turned its attention to embrace Bullish instead.

Going back to 2017, the public blockchain sector was in its golden era. Block.one released a whitepaper unveiling EOS, a super blockchain project that boasted slogans like "one million TPS, zero transaction fees," instantly attracting global investors who swarmed in. Within a year, EOS raised $4.2 billion through its ICO, setting a record in the industry and igniting fantasies of being the "Ethereum killer."

However, dreams that rise quickly tend to collapse just as fast. After the EOS mainnet went live, users soon discovered that the chain was not as "invincible" as advertised. While transactions did not require fees, users had to stake CPU and RAM, making the process complicated and raising the entry bar. The node elections, far from being the envisioned "democratic governance," were quickly controlled by whales and exchanges, leading to issues like vote-buying and mutual vote manipulation.

What truly accelerated the decline of EOS, however, was not just technological issues but more so problems arising from internal resource allocation within Block.one.

Block.one initially promised to allocate $1 billion to support the EOS ecosystem, but their actions painted a completely different picture: massive purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds, hoarding 160,000 Bitcoin, investing in the failed social product Voice, as well as using funds for stock trading and buying domain names. The amount truly directed to supporting EOS developers? Pitifully little.

At the same time, power within the company was highly centralized. Almost all senior executives were people close to Block.one founder BB, including family members and friends, forming a small, clique-like "family business." After 2020, BM announced his departure from the project, which also marked the beginning of Block.one’s complete split from EOS.

What truly ignited the anger of the EOS community, however, 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 funding. The list of investors was impressive—backed by heavyweights such as PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and seasoned Wall Street player Mike Novogratz. This new platform was pitched as compliant and stable, aiming to serve as a "bridge" for institutional investors entering the crypto space.

But Bullish, from its technology to its branding, had almost zero involvement with EOS—it didn’t use EOS technology, didn’t accept EOS tokens, and didn’t even acknowledge any connection with EOS. Not even the most basic expression of gratitude was given.

To the EOS community, this was nothing short of an open betrayal: Block.one was leveraging the resources it had amassed while building EOS to start an entirely new "favorite child." And EOS? Left completely abandoned in the dust.

As a result, the EOS community began to fight back.

At the end of 2021, the community initiated a "fork rebellion," attempting to sever Block.one’s control. Representing the community, the EOS Foundation stepped up and began negotiating with Block.one. Over the course of one month, various solutions were discussed, but no agreement was reached. Finally, the EOS Foundation, in cooperation with 17 nodes, revoked Block.one’s authority and removed them from EOS’s governance structure. In 2022, the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) launched a legal lawsuit, accusing Block.one of breaking their ecological commitments; in 2023, the community even considered using a hard fork to completely isolate the assets of Block.one and Bullish.

Related Reading: 《The Full Story of EOS Nodes Freezing Block.one Accounts: The Parent Company Ousted by the Community》.

After the separation of EOS and Block.one, the EOS community engaged in years-long litigation over the ownership of the funds initially raised. However, as of now, Block.one still retains the ownership and usage rights to the funds.

In the eyes of many in the EOS community, Bullish is not seen as a "new project," but rather as a symbol of betrayal. This Bullish, which secretly filed for an IPO, is regarded as the "new love" that traded their ideals for reality—glamorous, yet shameful.

In 2025, in an effort to distance itself from the past, EOS officially rebranded as Vaulta, aiming to build a Web3 banking business on its blockchain foundation. The token EOS was also renamed to A.

The Wealth of Block.one: Exactly How Much Money Do They Have?

What we do know is this: Block.one raised $4.2 billion during its early days, marking the largest fundraising event in crypto history. In theory, such a sum could have supported EOS's long-term development, fostered developers, driven technical innovation, and ensured the ecosystem’s sustainable growth. However, when EOS ecosystem developers pleaded for funding, Block.one issued a mere $50,000 check—a sum insufficient to cover two months of salary for a Silicon Valley engineer.

"Where did the $4.2 billion go?" the community questioned.

A partial answer was revealed in a March 19, 2019, email from BM to Block.one shareholders: as of February 2019, Block.one held a total of $3 billion in assets (including cash and investments). Of this amount, approximately $2.2 billion was invested in U.S. government bonds.

So, where did the $4.2 billion end up? Broadly speaking, it was allocated to three main areas: $2.2 billion in government bonds—low risk, stable returns, ensuring wealth preservation; 160,000 bitcoins, now worth over $16 billion; and smaller ventures in stock trading and acquisitions, such as the failed investment in Silvergate and the purchase of the Voice domain name.

What many people don’t know is that EOS's parent company, Block.one, is currently the largest private holder of Bitcoin, owning a total of 160,000 BTC. This exceeds even stablecoin giant Tether’s holdings by 40,000 BTC.

Data Source: bitcointreasuries

At the current price of $109,650, this 160,000 BTC stash is worth approximately $17.544 billion. In other words, just from the appreciation of this Bitcoin holding, Block.one has gained over $13 billion on paper, roughly 4.18 times the amount raised during its ICO.

From the perspective of "cash flow is king," Block.one has been highly successful, arguably even more "forward-looking" than MicroStrategy. It is one of the most profitable "project teams" in the history of crypto. However, this success is not due to "building a great blockchain," but rather through "maximizing capital preservation, expanding assets, and making a smooth exit."

This highlights an ironic and realistic aspect of the crypto world: in the crypto space, the ultimate winners are not always those with the "best technology" or the "most passionate ideals," but often those who are the most compliant, the most pragmatic in assessing the situation, and the best at safeguarding their funds.

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