The crypto industry is witnessing a resurgence in public market interest, fueled by President Donald Trump’s administration’s pro-crypto stance.
Asset management firm Ark Invest foresaw this prospective wave of interest months ago, indicating that Trump’s stance on crypto would provide a runway for multiple Initial Public Offerings (IPOs).
Gemini Moves Closer to Public Debut
Gemini exchange, the crypto exchange founded by billionaire twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, reportedly filed for an IPO confidentially and could go public as soon as this year.
Bloomberg, citing sources close to the matter, said the exchange was working with financial heavyweights Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. This move came after the US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) closed its investigation into Gemini without pursuing enforcement action. As BeInCrypto reported, this cleared a major regulatory hurdle for the firm.
Gemini’s decision to go public coincides with its co-founders’ increasing political engagement. Notably, the Winklevoss twins were among the attendees at Trump’s White House Crypto Summit, reflecting their growing influence in the crypto policy space.
The brothers were also notable financial supporters of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. They donated Bitcoin beyond the legal limit, resulting in a partial refund.
Trump’s administration has been vocal in supporting cryptocurrency, following through with previous commitments for a strategic crypto reserve. Gemini is poised to take advantage of this favorable climate.
The exchange recently disclosed financial highlights for 2024, revealing revenue of $1.5 billion and adjusted earnings of $380 million. Like Gemini, the US SEC also dropped its lawsuit against Kraken, reversing its previous stance and signaling a broader shift in crypto enforcement.
Like Gemini, the Biden administration stifled Kraken’s IPO ambitions due to regulatory pressures, including SEC enforcement actions. However, with both cases now settled, the companies see an opportunity to enter the public markets.
Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi also attended the White House Crypto Summit, signaling the company’s alignment with the administration’s crypto-friendly policies.
Based on these, therefore, the IPO climate for crypto firms appears increasingly favorable. Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest had predicted that firms like Kraken and stablecoin issuer Circle would pursue IPOs under a Trump administration, a forecast that now seems to be materializing.
Meanwhile, Kraken and Gemini are not alone in this trend. BitGo, a major digital asset custodian, is also reportedly exploring a public listing in the second half of 2025.
During the 2025 edition of the Paris Blockchain Week, BeInCrypto sat down with Alexis Yellow, CEO of Yellow, a crypto project working on an entirely new paradigm based on Satoshi’s initial vision for Bitcoin.
He talks about the upcoming Yellow Tokens, a new smart contract mechanism, and making crypto projects more utility-driven.
Alexis, can you introduce yourself?
I’m Alexis, a software engineer by background. I worked at the European Space Center early in my career, but my crypto journey started quite unexpectedly.
Back in 2013, an old friend from school reached out—he was working at Goldman Sachs and told me about a project that needed help. He said, “There are 12 people in Silicon Valley printing fake money.” That project turned out to be Ripple.
Ripple ended up being our first client, and that experience really helped me grasp the potential of crypto.
Despite the skepticism surrounding the space, I saw real innovation. Ripple’s CTO was a Bitcoin Core contributor, and Vitalik Buterin was involved with the team before Ethereum.
Actually, Buterin was planning to join Ripple. He was especially excited about their consensus mechanism, which inspired me, too.
One thing that always stuck with me was Satoshi’s idea: We need systems where trust isn’t a prerequisite. That idea shaped a lot of my thinking.
Around 2018–2019, I decided to start Yellow. We later merged with a French exchange technology company called OpenWare. Combining my market experience with their tech, we launched Yellow Network.
So, it’s a trading infrastructure designed to let institutions, like Société Générale, trade directly with major players like Binance without needing to trust them.
Trading with exchanges like Binance without trusting them, do you mean trust as a counterparty?
Exactly that’s at the core of Satoshi’s vision. At Yellow, we’re working on a different model of trustlessness using state channels, which represent a new paradigm compared to traditional blockchain systems like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
In those systems, you have tens of thousands of nodes, say, around 30,000, validating each transaction. It’s a powerful model for security, each validator has a financial incentive to be honest, and there’s no way to roll back a confirmed transaction.
The same applies to staking networks. But that structure just doesn’t work for high-frequency trading. You can’t have 30,000 nodes verifying every microsecond trade. It’s simply too slow and inefficient.
For example, some networks try to solve this by reducing the number of validators to 21, but that compromises the level of trust and decentralization. Our approach is fundamentally different. The Lightning Network inspires it, but we’ve taken it in a new direction.
With the Lightning Network, you can move money instantly by opening a state channel. At Yellow Network, we use similar state channels but instead of transferring funds directly, we transfer profit and loss in real time.
For instance, if you buy a Bitcoin for $100,000 and it rises 5%, the $5,000 profit is immediately transferred to your wallet. The trade is settled instantly, peer-to-peer, with cryptographic proof.
To ensure security and fairness, we’ve built a smart contract called ClearSync. If a counterparty refuses to settle, as we saw with the HyperLiquid issue recently, ClearSync can step in and arbitrate the trade.
It verifies the claim and, if valid, ensures the rightful party receives what they’re owed. So, it’s a trustless system that still allows for the speed and flexibility traders need.
1/ $JELLYJELLY on @HyperliquidX and what happens when we rely on trust.
No, it’s peer-to-peer trading. Nothing is faster or more efficient than a direct state channel between two parties. Profit is transferred instantly. That’s the core of this new paradigm: trustless trading, where settlement happens in real time.
Let’s say we’re trading and the connection drops, no problem. If I made a profit, it’s already secured. I might not receive the asset, like Bitcoin, but my profit in dollars is locked in. There’s no need to trust the other party to settle correctly.
Is it effective profit or a claim to profit?
It’s effective profit, denominated in dollars or whatever currency is locked as collateral. Here’s how it works – two parties lock in $20,000 to trade Bitcoin. That amount represents the maximum they’re willing to risk.
If the trade results in a $5,000 profit for one side, that amount is instantly settled, even if the other party refuses to finalize the trade.
If both agree to settle, I send you $100,000, you send me one Bitcoin, and both our collaterals unlock.
Can you switch to stablecoin?
Absolutely. In fact, we’re working with stablecoin issuers to create partnerships and potential investments in Yellow.
Can you give us an idea of the size of the Yellow Group? How many people are there? How many transactions do you process ?
We haven’t officially launched. Before the war in Ukraine, we had a large team of over 100 people. Many have since relocated, mostly to Poland, but we still have staff in Ukraine. Right now, we’re about 50 people globally.
Meanwhile, you can track activity on our analytics site, BundleBear. On Polygon, we’re already the fourth most active app. On Linea, a new protocol by Consensys, we’re number one with over 229,000 users despite not being live yet.
We can see on your website that you are offering your technology so that you can list any token without going through a CEX or a DEX. Is that part of the project?
Exactly. The Yellow Wallet is like a Layer 3; it lets users interact with any chain seamlessly. It now supports cross-chain swaps, like moving tokens from Polygon to Binance Smart Chain, with zero fees. It’s designed to remove friction from cross-chain trading.
Seamless cross-chain swaps, all in your Yellow Wallet!
Swap between BNB, Base, Arbitrum, AVAX, Polygon, OP, Linea, and Scroll with ease.
No, not for the state channels themselves. We don’t monetize trades directly. The Yellow token plays a security role, a “necessary evil,” like ETH or BTC.
Your security deposit gets burned if you behave badly and refuse to settle. It ensures honesty in a peer-to-peer environment. Think of it like a miner losing their reward for trying to cheat.
How do you make money from the usage of your service?
The token economy is the foundation. Just like ETH or BTC derive value from usage and network participation, the Yellow token does too.
It’s needed to place security deposits in the network, and over time, its utility and adoption by industry players will drive its value.
If someone cheats, their token gets burned—creating deflationary pressure and reinforcing good behavior.
Is the token already traded?
Not yet, but we’re planning to launch in the next couple of months. We’ll mint 10 billion Yellow tokens; ideally, that number stays close to that.
If too many tokens get burned, it could indicate issues in the system. It’s a built-in signal to monitor the health and integrity of the network.
Are you going to start it with an airdrop or something of the sort?
No, we’re focused on utility-based distribution. Most tokens will be sold directly in the markets where they’re used. Ethereum didn’t launch with an airdrop. Neither did Bitcoin.
This is a B2B infrastructure project—just like Ethereum and Ripple. While the network is open to everyone, our core users are businesses and institutional players.
That said, the beauty of crypto is that the ecosystem is open. Anyone who believes in the project can get involved and benefit from the network effect, without needing to be a developer or an insider.
Anything important that we left out?
Yes, very few cryptocurrencies are used in the real world today. Bitcoin has proven its value as a store of wealth.
Ethereum demonstrated its utility during the ICO boom. USDT fills a vital gap in places where dollars are hard to access.
We believe Yellow can become the fourth pillar. It’s solving a real need in crypto markets: scalable, trustless, high-frequency trading. And we’re making it open source so the whole industry can benefit.
It’s obvious that Web3 applications will need infrastructure to reach the scale of platforms like Twitter or YouTube.
At Pragma today, @Yellow‘s Louis Bellet shared the secret weapon Ethereum already has to achieve this today.
I think this approach, state channels for speed and smart contracts for resolution, will redefine how trading infrastructure works. It’s ideal for gaming and other fast-paced applications where blockchains never truly fit.
Blockchain isn’t always the answer, especially if you’re using 30,000 nodes to validate a game move. That’s just not efficient.
With Yellow, the trading side is handled through cryptographic state channels not full decentralization. But if something goes wrong, we still fall back to a smart contract to arbitrate. That’s the balance we’re bringing.
Also, we’re working on a new ERC standard for this. In the next 3–4 years, I expect that 10–20% of new crypto projects will adopt this architecture.
Overall, We’re not just building a product, we’re introducing a new philosophy for how decentralized systems can operate more efficiently.
The co-founders of President Trump-backed World Liberty Financial (WLFI)—Zach Witkoff, Zak Folkman, and Chase Herro—met with Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) in Abu Dhabi.
Their conversation centered on developing strategic initiatives to standardize and expand the cryptocurrency industry worldwide.
What Did WLFI Co-Founders and CZ Discuss in Abu Dhabi?
WLFI highlighted the meeting in a post on X (formerly Twitter). The organization stressed that the move marked the start of a broader initiative to drive innovation in the industry. The meeting agenda centered on strategies to accelerate the global adoption of cryptocurrencies.
It also covered the creation of new industry standards. Finally, the participants discussed initiatives to push the crypto sector into its next phase of growth and development.
“The future belongs to the builders, not the bystanders. We’re just getting started,” Witkoff stated.
In a separate post on X, CZ highlighted that he also met with Bilal Bin Saqib, CEO of the Pakistan Crypto Council (PCC), alongside Witkoff. Notably, the meeting comes shortly after WLFI and PCC’s latest collaboration.
“Our goal is to work alongside industry leaders and showcase Pakistan as a global case study in how emerging markets can harness blockchain to create transformative opportunities,” Saqib said.
Zhao also expressed optimism about the meeting. However, he cautioned that traditional media might frame the event negatively.
“I have a feeling the trad media will try to make up some negative story about this. But we keep building,” CZ wrote.
Zhao argued that Bloomberg negatively framed his efforts by emphasizing his past legal issues rather than focusing on his current work.
Meanwhile, the criticism isn’t limited to CZ. World Liberty Financialhas also been the center of substantial scrutiny, given its ties to the President. US senators have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest. In fact, previous reports emerged about the Trump family possibly acquiring a stake in Binance—claims that CZ strongly refuted.
Despite external scrutiny, the high-profile meeting affirms the involved parties’ commitment to building a more solid and collaborative future for the cryptocurrency sector.
1/ $JELLYJELLY on 
