The crypto initial public offering market is slowing down in 2026, with four major players in the sector having postponed their IPOs. According to Christian Lopez, blockchain lead at Cohen &
The crypto initial public offering market is slowing down in 2026, with four major players in the sector having postponed their IPOs. According to Christian Lopez, blockchain lead at Cohen & Company Capital Markets, investor caution now weighs more than regulation. Will the sector regain public market appetite before 2027?
The crypto initial public offering market is slowing significantly in 2026, as investors redirect their capital towards other technological sectors.
Your 1st cryptos with BitpandaThis link uses an affiliate program.Christian Lopez, blockchain and digital assets lead at Cohen & Company Capital Markets, places the turning point last October when a liquidity event drained part of the ecosystem’s capital. Retail investors, traditional drivers of the crypto market, have since massively turned to artificial intelligence.
This rotation then extended to the most prized technology stocks, notably the shares of the seven giants of the sector grouped under the Mag 7 label. More recently, however, even these AI-linked stocks have suffered significant corrections, a sign of a new portfolio reallocation.
Several companies were expecting a prosperous year after the successful listings of Circle (CRCL) and Bullish (BLSH), the parent company of CoinDesk. The weakness of the markets and the disappointing performance of BitGo (BTGO) after its IPO have since dampened this optimism, a finding Lopez shared with CoinDesk.
Macro-economic uncertainty amplifies investor caution. Expectations regarding interest rates and global deleveraging, notably recent interventions by the Bank of Japan to support the yen, weigh on appetite for high beta assets like cryptos. Lopez believes the market might not significantly reopen to crypto listings before 2027, with a cycle bottom expected around October.
Despite this slowdown, blockchain technology continues to gain ground in traditional finance. Morgan Stanley, Nasdaq, and the New York Stock Exchange are developing a settlement infrastructure via tokenization, while the sector moves towards near-instant settlement, from T+1 to T+0.
The OpenUSD network, which already brings together more than 140 financial institutions around a stablecoin infrastructure, illustrates this dynamic. According to Lopez, the long-term winners will be blockchain infrastructure providers rather than companies built around a single token, knowing that many small cryptos are already struggling to raise funds in private markets.
In short, the slowdown of crypto IPOs reflects less a regulatory issue than an overall tightening of capital access. The rotation towards AI, uncertainty over interest rates, and the expectation of a bottom around October form a common movement of caution among investors.
Bitcoin, ether and solana are expected to remain benchmark assets, while thousands of smaller tokens risk disappearing within three to five years. A selection process that could reshape the crypto landscape permanently.
