Crypto company Copper prepares for an IPO! Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank rushed into the custody track

Copper negotiated an IPO, with Goldman Sachs and Citibank participating in the underwriting, depending on revenue performance. BitGo plummeted after rising 36% on the first day of its IPO last week. In 2025, 11 crypto companies will go public and raise $146 billion. Copper, which provides MPC custody, settlement services, has appointed a compliance officer and a new CEO.

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank have entered the cryptocurrency custody track

According to three people familiar with the matter, cryptocurrency custody firm Copper is in preliminary talks about going public. According to sources, investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank may be involved. A second person familiar with the matter said that whether to seek listing will depend on the company’s recent revenue performance. As the matter is private, the person requested anonymity.

A spokesperson for Copper said in an email response: “As is customary, Copper regularly evaluates a range of potential financing options to support the company’s business and customers, but we currently have no plans to go public.” However, the spokesperson declined to comment on whether the company is currently in early talks about a potential listing. As of press time, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank have not responded to requests for comment.

It is extremely rare for the three major investment banks to participate in underwriting negotiations at the same time, indicating the potential scale of the Copper IPO. Typically, only large IPOs valued at billions of dollars attract bids from multiple top investment banks. The involvement of these investment banks also brings traditional financial endorsements to Copper, helping to attract institutional investors to subscribe. Goldman Sachs has extensive experience in technology IPOs and has led Coinbase’s direct listings; Citigroup and Deutsche Bank have a strong presence in the European market and may help Copper to go public in London or dual listing.

Copper meets Wall Street’s preferred “infrastructure” criteria. The company provides institutional-grade cryptocurrency infrastructure, including custody services based on multi-party computation (MPC) technology, as well as settlement and prime broker services designed to reduce counterparty risk for banks and trading firms. MPC technology is currently the most advanced encrypted asset custody solution, which divides private keys into multiple fragments for distributed storage, and no single fragment can reconstruct the complete private key, and only multiple fragments can be computed together to sign transactions. This technology eliminates the risk of a single point of failure and is key to institutional investor trust.

In March last year, the custodian company appointed Tammy Weinrib as Chief Compliance Officer for the Americas and Head of the Bank Secrecy Act as part of the company’s expansion plans in the region. Previously, Amar Kuchinad was appointed Global CEO in October 2024. These senior appointments indicate that Copper is preparing for an IPO, as public companies require a well-established compliance structure and an experienced management team.

BitGo IPO’s rollercoaster alert

Copper joins a plethora of digital asset companies targeting the open market, becoming the latest crypto-native venture to consider an IPO. Previously, its rival custody provider, BitGo, had made a high-profile listing on the New York Stock Exchange last week at an issue price of $18 per share. With an IPO valuation of approximately $20M, BitGo has set a new benchmark for infrastructure construction companies in the financial industry.

On its first day of listing, the stock surged 36% to close at $18.49. This first-day surge has sparked FOMO in the market, with many investors viewing crypto infrastructure stocks as “steady profits and not losses” investments. However, since its first-day gains, the stock has faced significant downward pressure. At press time, the stock was trading at around $12.50, down about 30% from its IPO issue price and halved from its first-day high.

BitGo’s plunge serves as an important warning to Copper. The first-day surge often comes from underwriters deliberately driving down the issue price and FOMO buying by early investors, but this rally is difficult to sustain. When first-day profits pour out in the following days, stock prices that lack fundamental support will quickly fall. BitGo’s plunge could stem from the following reasons: overvaluation ($20M corresponding to a price-earnings ratio could exceed 100x), overall weakness in the crypto market dragged down, or investors finding that its financial data is not as expected.

For investors considering subscribing to the Copper IPO, BitGo’s experience offers three lessons: don’t chase high on day one, carefully study financial statements and valuation rationality, and focus on selling pressure after the lock-up period ends (shares of early investors and employees are usually unlocked 6-12 months after the IPO).

2026 Crypto Infrastructure IPO Year

After years of silence, the cryptocurrency industry has finally surpassed the IPO ceiling in 2025, transforming from a frontier of speculation to a mainstay of the public market. Driven by growing regulatory clarity and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) supportive stance on cryptocurrencies, several large companies, including Circle, CoinDesk’s parent company Bullish, and Gemini, have successfully listed their companies.

According to Pitchbook, at least 11 crypto companies will go public in 2025, raising a total of $146M, a huge leap from $3.1M in 2024. This figure even surpasses the size of IPO financing at the peak of the 2021 bull market, indicating that the market’s recognition of the crypto industry has reached new heights. Although the most notable thing about the year was these blockbuster listings, the market performance showed a very different polarization.

Institutional-grade infrastructure stocks rose as much as 200% on their first day of listing, while some other stocks, such as Gemini, led by the Winklevoss brothers, struggled amidst the sharp market volatility after listing, eventually closing well below the issue price. This differentiation reflects the market’s completely different attitudes towards different types of crypto companies: companies that provide infrastructure and compliance services (such as custody, settlement, data analysis) are seen as “shovel sellers” and can earn stable income regardless of the ups and downs of the crypto market; Direct-to-consumer companies such as exchanges and wallets rely heavily on trading volume for revenue, and their performance plummeted in a bear market.

In an interview with CoinDesk, Laura Katherine Mann, a partner at White & Case, said that if listings in 2025 are mainly focused on projects related to digital assets, 2026 is more like the year of financial infrastructure construction. She expects the next wave of IPO candidates to place a greater emphasis on compliance maturity, recurring revenue, and operational resilience, which are more familiar traits to public market investors. Copper meets this criterion, with its custody, settlement, and prime broker services all generating consistent subscription revenue or transaction fees, with a clear and predictable business model.

This follows a $20M IPO by rival BitGo last week, a move that signals a shift in the market from speculative tokens to the financial foundation of digital assets. This shift in trend is significant for the entire crypto industry, meaning that Wall Street and mainstream investors are beginning to take cryptocurrencies seriously, moving away from seeing them as pure speculative gamble and acknowledging their infrastructure value as an emerging asset class.