A few months ago, every crypto firm with a balance sheet wanted to go public. Now one of the biggest is hitting pause.
Ledger just put its U.S. IPO on hold.
Ledger, the French maker of crypto wallets, has paused plans for a U.S. listing. The firm pointed to weak market mood for the call.
It has not filed any draft S-1 forms with the SEC. That is the first step in going public.
Back in January, Ledger hired Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays to lead the deal. The deal was said to value the firm at about $4 billion.
The listing could have come as soon as this year. Now Ledger has options - try again later, or raise cash in private while it waits.
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Ledger is not alone. Kraken, one of the largest U.S. crypto exchanges, paused its own IPO earlier this year after filing in private with the SEC in late 2025.
The crypto IPO boom of 2025 ran into colder air this year. Token prices have softened, and trading volumes are down.
Public market buyers are also less keen on crypto than they were six months ago. For a firm like Ledger, that mix is hard to ignore.
Going public into a weak market means a lower price tag. It also means lower demand from buyers and a rough start as a public stock.
A weak debut tends to bruise a firm's brand. Cutting a deal in private avoids the news cycle and lets the firm wait for a better window to try again.
Ledger sells small devices that let people store crypto offline. The product keeps private keys safe.
Those keys are the codes that control access to coins like Bitcoin and Ether.
Ledger is one of the most known names in crypto outside of the exchanges. The firm was said to be tripling its 2023 value with the planned IPO.
That kind of jump shows how much investor demand for crypto names had grown before this year's pullback. The reversal now is sharp.
Going public would have let small investors buy a piece of the firm. For now, that option is off the table.
The pause is a signal, not a verdict. Firms hit pause when the market is moving the wrong way for them, and they restart when prices come back.
A confidential SEC filing is the first formal IPO step, and Ledger has not even done that. The deal could come back, but the timeline is now wide open.
Watch what the next crypto firm in line does. If more pull back, the public-market door for crypto has quietly shut for the year.
Either way, the IPO that was meant to mark the next leg of crypto going mainstream is on ice for now.
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