Author: TSX Stocks

Mike Novogratz‘s crypto firm Galaxy Digital started trading on the Nasdaq on Friday under the ticker GLXY. The stock opened at $23.50 per share on the U.S. exchange.

Galaxy Digital, which has been traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange since 2020, shifted its shares to the Nasdaq through a direct listing — a move that follows a grueling, multiyear battle with U.S. regulators.

Novogratz told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday that Galaxy’s value now hinges on two high-growth areas: crypto and artificial intelligence.

“These are the two most exciting growth areas in markets, right. AI and the infrastructure needed for AI to exist and crypto finally … at the brink of institutional adoption,” he said. “We have built our company for this moment, so I couldn’t be more excited.”

Novogratz said Galaxy is effectively two businesses now: “We are a data center company and a crypto company.”

The Nasdaq listing comes after four years of regulatory delays, with Galaxy spending more than $25 million and enduring nine rounds of back-and-forth comments with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to Novogratz. What should have taken at most, 90 days, stretched to 1,320, he said.

“You needed to be very well capitalized — and a pretty big, strong company — just to stay in the game,” Novogratz told CNBC.

The billionaire also pointed to the U.S. market’s unmatched depth, saying Galaxy’s visibility in Canada was one-thirtieth of what it could achieve in the United States.

“If we had been in the U.S. markets those four years, we’d be a different company,” he said.

The listing follows eToro‘s successful Nasdaq debut this week, signaling renewed investor appetite for crypto-adjacent firms after years of regulatory caution.

The IPO market has repeatedly tricked investors into believing it’s reopening after an extended drought dating back to early 2022. There are, once again, signs of hope.

Shares of stock brokerage platform eToro jumped nearly 29% in their Nasdaq debut Wednesday after the Israel-based company priced its IPO above the expected range. That same day, in its first earnings report as a public company, artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave reported 420% revenue growth, topping estimates.

CoreWeave shares rocketed about 60% this week and have doubled in value since the company’s March IPO.

It’s a big momentum swing from a month ago.

Early in President Donald Trump’s second White House term, bankers and venture investors were bullish on a reinvigorated IPO market. But after the rollout and subsequent pause of Trump’s sweeping tariff policy rocked the market in April, companies including online lender Klarna and ticket marketplace StubHub delayed their long-awaited offerings.

Exits for venture firms in the first quarter hit their highest quarterly value since the fourth quarter of 2021, but nearly 40% came from the CoreWeave IPO, according to the National Venture Capital Association and PitchBook.

“Although we anticipated a resurgence in IPO activity as the year progressed, that outlook has diminished due to the imposed tariffs,” the NVCA and PitchBook wrote in their first-quarter report in mid-April. “As public market investors shift toward less risky investments, many VC-backed companies may struggle to generate the demand necessary to meet their high market valuations.”

The second quarter is seeing more action.

Klarna and StubHub haven’t provided updates, and both companies declined to comment for this story. But the successful debut of eToro, which had also put its plans on hold, could encourage others to follow.

Fintech company Chime on Tuesday filed its prospectus to go public on the Nasdaq, after it had delayed IPO plans following the tariffs announcement. Digital health company Omada Health filed to go public last week. 

“The market is going to come back,” Rachel Gerring, Ernst & Young’s Americas IPO leader, told CNBC. “It’s just a matter of when. It’s not a matter of if.” 

Gerring said optimism has started to rebound. Part of that is tied to Trump’s 90-day pause on its most stringent trade policies, and a drastic reduction on tariffs from China in the meantime.

However, there’s still plenty of uncertainty, which Gerring said can be difficult for companies to manage, especially as they’re preparing to hit the market. She’s advising clients to focus on preparedness so they’re able to capitalize on the market when the time is right.

In digital health, all eyes next week will be on Hinge Health.

The virtual physical therapy company filed its initial prospectus in March. Hinge updated the document this week with an expected pricing range of $28 to $32, which would value the company at about $2.4 billion in the middle of the range, not including some of its potential outstanding shares.

Digital health has been a particularly tough market over the last few years, following a Covid-era pop, when consumers and patients shifted to virtual solutions. Growth has since slowed dramatically.

AI is a different story, and chipmaker Cerebras provided an update of sorts this week.

Cerebras filed to go public in September, but the process was slowed due to a review by the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS. Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman said Thursday at a company event that his “aspiration” is to take the chipmaker public this year now that it’s obtained necessary clearance from the committee.

And digital assets company Galaxy Digital started trading on the Nasdaq on Friday, switching over from the Toronto Stock Exchange. The New York-based firm went public in Canada in 2020, as U.S. regulators were wary of crypto. 

Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz said the switch will help “enable us to attract a broader investor base,” according to a release. 

Still, for tech IPO activity to really pick up, more large-scale, growth-oriented companies need to come to market, Gerring said. 

“The IPO market might be one of the latter ones to return as the market starts to recover, just given the risk around IPOs,” Gerring said. “We’re trending in the right direction.”

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TORONTO — Mike Novogratz said he spent nearly four years and more than $25 million trying to take crypto firm Galaxy Digital public in the United States.

“It felt un-American, unfair, infuriating,” Novogratz said.

Novogratz told CNBC that a process that should take 45 to 90 days stretched out to 1,320 days. He said it took nine rounds of comments with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“One of the things that people didn’t understand about the crypto tax is that you needed to be very well capitalized — and a pretty big, strong company — just to stay in the game,” he said.

The billionaire crypto mogul will finally ring the opening bell at the Nasdaq Friday under the ticker GLXY with his company trading on U.S. public markets for the first time in a direct listing.

Novogratz said Galaxy’s auditing costs were significantly higher than those of firms like Jefferies — a consequence of the regulatory scrutiny that comes with being a crypto company. He said he expects those fees to drop by as much as 40% now that Galaxy is listed on the Nasdaq.

Yet instead of breaking Galaxy, the ordeal seemed to harden it.

“Scarcity makes you tougher,” Novogratz said. “We funded our company mostly through investment gains and trading.”

“We weren’t the only company that suffered,” Novogratz said, pointing to eToro, the Israeli trading platform, that went public on Nasdaq this week. Its listing was one of the first major fintech IPOs since 2021, signaling that investor appetite for crypto-adjacent firms is returning after years of regulatory caution and market volatility.

Until now, Galaxy Digital’s home on the public markets has been on the Toronto Stock Exchange, where the New York-based company went public in 2020, because U.S. regulators were too wary of crypto.

The TSX has become a testing ground for digital asset firms that couldn’t gain traction in American markets, even as U.S. investors and capital loomed just across the border.

But for Novogratz, whose ambitions were always bigger, the U.S. was the stage that mattered.

“Our visibility, volume, and notoriety in the Canadian market versus the U.S. is one to 30 — the U.S. market is 30 times deeper,” he said. “If we had been in the U.S. markets those four years, we’d be a different company.”

The former hedge fund manager turned crypto entrepreneur has built a reputation for direct and candid conversations. In Washington, he witnessed first-hand how crypto evolved from a fringe curiosity to a central issue in American politics.

“I was at the vice president’s inaugural ball as a representative Democrat,” Novogratz said.

In a room of roughly 300 attendees, he said he counted around 20 crypto CEOs — a striking show of the industry’s growing influence in Washington.

“I mean, it was shocking — the crypto representation down in D.C. over the inauguration — and Democrats noticed that. So I think, in earnest, there’s a core group of Democrats, and a big one, probably the majority of Democrats, that just want to pass crypto legislation that’s good for America, and move on, and, quite frankly, get crypto off the map as an electoral issue,” he said.

The turning point came with the election of President Donald Trump, a political shift that Novogratz saw unfolding in real-time.

“The flip got switched… the old regime knew the new regime was coming, and so they started to be much more supportive,” he said.

Conversations that had once been closed suddenly opened.

Novogratz met incoming SEC Chair Paul Atkins around the time of the inauguration. Atkins wasn’t yet in the role, but his stance was clear — he prioritized fair disclosure and leaned pro-business, pro-risk. Their conversation was high-level, focused on the regulator’s approach, but it left Novogratz with a sense of optimism.

“Ringing the bell is kind of the starting line, not the finish line,” said Novogratz.

TORONTO — Canada has quietly become a global leader in digital assets.

Canada was among the first countries to enact rules for crypto, starting with anti-money laundering guidelines in 2014. The country has repeatedly evolved its regulatory guidance in recent years, while U.S. lawmakers remain stuck in gridlock — even with a pro-crypto White House and a Republican-controlled Congress.

That regulatory clarity has made Toronto a launchpad for blockchain growth, and Wall Street is taking notice.

Robinhood‘s recent acquisition of Canadian crypto firm WonderFi, owner of Bitbuy and Coinsquare, plugs it into Canada’s established user base.

“Canada is a very attractive market for us,” said Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s crypto chief. “It’s projected to be more than 30 million users using crypto here in Canada, with revenue projections of about $900 million in 2025.”

The company’s decision to spend just under $180 million to buy WonderFi, which has one of the longest-standing crypto licenses in the country, is a direct bet on that growth.

Galaxy Digital, the digital asset investing giant founded by Mike Novogratz, is headquartered in New York but listed in Canada because it couldn’t go public in the United States. After being among the first to launch spot bitcoin ETFs in the U.S., Galaxy will finally debut on the Nasdaq on Friday.

DeFi Technologies, a Canadian player focused on being the Strategy of Solana, is also planning a U.S. listing.

“A lot of companies have started on the Toronto Stock Exchange and are trying to uplist into the Nasdaq,” said Ondo Finance CEO Nathan Allman. “I think we’re going to see more of that.”

At Consensus 2025 in Toronto, one of the world’s largest crypto conferences, JPMorgan, Ondo, and Chainlink announced a $100 billion bet on blockchain with a new platform to tokenize real-world assets.

The two firms say the new offering allows treasuries to be tokenized and settled using blockchain, combining JPMorgan’s Kinexys Digital Payments network with Ondo’s blockchain infrastructure.

“It’s really the first time that there’s been this interoperability between a bank’s permissioned blockchain environment and a public blockchain,” Allman said.

Crypto dealmaking has shown signs of life in recent months, as the United States has shifted its regulatory approach under President Donald Trump.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Federal Reserve have eased restrictions on banks handling crypto, rolling back prior guidance that required pre-approval for digital asset activities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has also taken a significant step by rescinding its restrictive accounting bulletin, which had forced companies holding crypto assets for clients to record them as liabilities. The new approach aligns crypto custody with traditional financial instruments.

At the same time, the SEC has launched a new Crypto Task Force, inviting public input on how to better regulate digital assets.

“They want large enterprises like Citi to have a seat at the table,” said Ryan Rugg, global head of digital assets for Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions division. “They’re asking for our opinion, where I think in the past, it was not quite the case.”

The booking of Eric Trump, the president’s son and a leader of the newly-formed American Bitcoin, as a headline speaker, highlighted the growing presence of the U.S. in the crypto arena. The firm made waves when it launched in March, and already intends to go public through a merger with Gryphon Digital Mining.

“It’s important to remember: Most countries are totally neutral on blockchain,” said Dan Morehead, CEO of Pantera Capital. “The U.S. had a fairly antagonistic stance on blockchain which made it difficult for companies to get bank accounts, made it difficult for companies to go public.”

He said he believes many companies that would have gone public a few years ago will hit U.S. markets in the next six months.

“There’s obviously tremendous appetite in the public markets,” he said.

Israel-based crypto and stock trading platform eToro went public on Wednesday after pricing above its expected range. Shares soared nearly 29% on its first trading day.

The advancements in the U.S. aren’t without setbacks. A first-of-its-kind stablecoin regulation bill failed to advance in the Senate after Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about national security, while others expressed concerns about the president’s ties to crypto.

Still, the payment giants are charging ahead.

Mastercard announced Thursday that it’s partnering with Moonpay to let customers use debit cards to transact using their stablecoin balances.

PayPal announced Wednesday that it’s partnering with artificial intelligence platform Perplexity to enable chat-powered shopping. PayPal’s senior vice president of blockchain, crypto, and digital currencies told CNBC at Consensus 2025 that he sees a future where customers could transact in AI chats with their PayPal stablecoins or other crypto holdings.

“We are trying to make sure that PayPal and Venmo are the gateway product to get more people into crypto,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s senior vice president of blockchain, crypto, and digital currencies. “A lot of people get into crypto through us, and that leads us to continue to add tokens.”

While PayPal leans on accessibility and payments, Robinhood is doubling down on tokenization and staking to capture both retail and institutional users.

“This debate here in the U.S. is really important — it shows that we want to embrace the technology instead of just regulating it and turning it off like it was before,” Kerbrat said, describing his appearance at an SEC roundtable under new chair Paul Atkins.

The company sees blockchain technology as a way to transform everything from stocks to private equity markets and real estate into digital tokens that can be traded instantly.

“We think at Robinhood that it is actually the future, and we can bring a lot more traditional assets on-chain using tokenization,” Kerbrat added.

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