Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse predicts that initial public offerings (IPOs) will become more prevalent in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space in 2020.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday, Jan. 23, Garlinghouse reportedly hinted that Ripple would itself be 1 of those firms to seek a public flotation:

"In the side by side 12 months, y'all'll come across IPOs in the crypto/blockchain space. We're not going to be the starting time and we're non going to be the last, merely I expect the states to be on the leading side… information technology's a natural development for our company."

"Natural development"

An IPO refers to the process of offering the shares of a individual corporation to the public in a new stock issuance. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to every bit "going public," or as "floating" corporate shares to the wider market.

The cryptocurrency industry has to appointment focused its energies on initial coin offerings (ICO), which evolved as an culling issuance model for still-immature, innovative firms that spared them many of the cumbersome legal and regulatory processes involved in a traditional IPO.

Withal as the space matures — and arguably, in the wake of the mail-boom ICO rout, which saw many offerings exposed equally either outright fraudulent or simply unsuccessful — some firms are now seeking to build confidence with mainstream investors by way of public listings on traditional stock exchanges, with all of the cherry record and fiscal disclosures that implies.

This is a trend that Garlinghouse appears to believe will consolidate itself in the nearly time to come, even as some of the manufacture's largest players have thus far struggled to meet the stringent requirements of an IPO.

As an alternative to adopting a traditional flotation model, major crypto firms such as Blockstack have instead chosen to pursue compliant token sales, with the approval of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Silvergate Bank — a California-based commercial depository financial institution focused on digital currency businesses — went public with an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in November. 2019.