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Farley, Thomas CNBC’s Anjali Sundaram Bullish, a cryptocurrency firm, aims to go public through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company financed by Tom Farley, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange. On the announcement, Farley’s Far Peak Acquisition Corporation SPAC rose almost 4% in premarket trading. The purchase, which was announced on Friday, is anticipated to finalize by the end of 2021, and Farley, who was the CEO of the NYSE from 2014 to 2018, would take over as CEO of Bullish at that time. Bullish anticipates receiving approximately $600 million in cash from Far Peak, as well as additional $300 million through a PIPE, or private investment in public equity. The PIPE is supported by a number of well-known investors, including BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and Mike Novogratz’s crypto-focused financial services firm Galaxy Digital. According to a press statement, the combination between Far Peak and Bullish has a pro forma equity value of $9 billion. According to the press release, Bullish plans to launch “a groundbreaking, regulated cryptocurrency exchange” later this year, with a private pilot program set to commence in the following weeks. According to the press announcement, the exchange will provide “deep, reliable liquidity with technology that allows consumers and institutional investors to create yield from their digital assets.” Bullish was founded in May as a subsidiary of Block.one, a blockchain startup backed by well-known investors such as PayPal co-founder and notable venture capitalist Peter Thiel. In May, Thiel’s firms, Thiel Capital and Founders Fund, took part in Bullish’s capital raising. Alan Howard, a British hedge fund manager, Galaxy Digital, and Richard Li, a Hong Kong wealthy businessman, are among the other investors in Bullish. In the past year, institutional adoption of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been a hot subject. Major Wall Street banks have taken steps to provide wealth management customers with exposure to digital assets, while companies like Tesla and Square have invested in bitcoin to hold on their balance sheets. Coinbase, the most popular crypto exchange in the United States, went public in April via a direct listing on the Nasdaq, a move that was hailed as a watershed moment for the small but growing industry. Coinbase went public at the same time as bitcoin hit an all-time high of around $65,000 per unit. However, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has faltered since then due to a variety of issues, including the Chinese government’s increased crypto crackdown. On Friday morning, Bitcoin was trading below $33,000. It temporarily fell below $29,000, where it began the year, last month. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as ether, are based on blockchains, which are decentralized digital ledgers. While the digital asset business has its detractors, advocates believe that the implementation of so-called smart contracts and other blockchain-related developments has the potential to disrupt traditional finance. Farley told CNBC in April that the crypto area is “the best hidden secret in the world, and possibly the history of the financial markets.” He continued, “It’s intriguing to me. It appears to be here to stay. We’ve passed the point where there’s no turning back.” The New York Stock Exchange took a minority investment in Coinbase in 2015, when Farley was still president./nRead More

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