The French hardware wallet company is putting its plans for an IPO on Wall Street on hold for now. Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays were already on board. The problem isn't Ledger—it's the timing.
Ledger had everything laid out on the table. Investment banks on board, a newly opened office in New York, a new CFO recruited directly from Circle, and a potential valuation of around $4 billion which made more than a few investors' eyes light up. The leap to public markets in the United States seemed only a matter of time. But on May 13, 2026, the news came from the opposite direction: Ledger has put its plans to go public in the U.S. on hold, and the reason is as old as the financial markets themselves: conditions are not favorable.
The information, confirmed by sources close to the process who preferred to remain anonymous, made it clear that the company has not filed any confidential draft of Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And that says it all. That document is, in formal terms, the starting gun for any IPO in the United States. Without it, Ledger has technically not even begun the official process. What existed was an intention, advanced discussions with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays, and a timeline that has now been put on hold.
The wall Ledger saw when he looked at Wall Street
To understand why Ledger is holding back, you have to look at the landscape that any crypto company attempting to go public right now would face. Bitcoin fell from $100,000 at the end of 2025 to around $75,000 in mid-April 2026, a 25% drop that dragged down market sentiment. Ethereum failed to recover, and spot trading volumes dropped by 19% between February and March alone. If that wasn’t enough of a warning sign, crypto venture capital plummeted by 74% between March and April. In that scenario, asking Wall Street to value a hardware wallet company at $4 billion was, to say the least, a risky exercise in optimism.
And Ledger had the most recent example right before his eyes: BitGo. The digital asset custodian was virtually the only crypto-native company to complete an IPO in the U.S. in 2026. It went public in January at $18 per share, raising about $213 million, and on its first day of trading on the NYSE, it rose more than 20%. Everything pointed to a successful debut. But the enthusiasm quickly evaporated. By May, BitGo shares were trading about 36% below their IPO price. A warning sign hard to ignore for any company eyeing the gateway to public markets.
She's not the first to back down
Ledger is not alone in this decision. Kraken, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States, also put its own multibillion-dollar IPO on hold in early 2026. In its case, the process was further along: the company had indeed filed confidential documents with the SEC in late 2025. Even so, it decided to wait. Then came Ledger. And it wouldn’t be surprising if more names joined the list in the coming months.
The trend shows a clear pattern: Institutional interest in cryptocurrencies is growing, but capital markets are still unsure how to value the companies building their infrastructure. The enthusiasm that characterized 2024 and part of 2025 has given way to a period of greater caution. Investors continue to view the sector with interest, but they are no longer jumping in blindly with a check in hand.
Ledger isn't slowing down: it remains committed to the U.S.
What is particularly noteworthy about this story is that Ledger is not backing down. The delay in the IPO is not a retreat from the U.S. market but, if anything, a more measured assessment of the best time to enter it. The company itself has made this clear through its recent actions.
In March 2026, Ledger appointed as chief financial officer John Andrews, a former executive at Circle Internet Group, the issuer of USDC. Andrews joined the company with a very specific focus: capital markets and investor relations—exactly what you need when you’re preparing for an initial public offering. That same month, the company opened an office in New York focused specifically on institutional clients and its platform Ledger Enterprise, designed for banks, asset managers, and stablecoin companies that need to custody digital assets with the highest level of security.
According to the company itself, the expansion would involve investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars and the hiring of dozens of new employees. This is not the profile of a company that backs down. It is the profile of a company that knows what it is building and has decided not to sell its IPO at a loss just because the original timeline called for it.
In April, Ledger also announced plans to strengthen its security systems in preparation for a future in which artificial intelligence agents can make payments, access data, and perform actions online independently. The company anticipated that these new scenarios will generate risks that current security models are not prepared to manage, and that its infrastructure will need to adapt. A move that, read between the lines, speaks to a company looking several years ahead, not just the next quarter.
Private fundraising as a Plan B?
One of the sources who confirmed the IPO pause noted that Ledger might choose to raise capital through private placement if conditions don’t improve. It wouldn’t be an unprecedented or humiliating scenario: many of the most solid companies in the crypto ecosystem have chosen to grow with the backing of private institutional investors before making the leap to public markets. The advantage is obvious: you don’t have to justify your valuation quarter after quarter to shareholders who might panic at the first sign of trouble with Bitcoin.
Ledger, founded in 2014, has sold more than seven million devices and holds over $100 billion in assets in custody. It is not a startup that urgently needs IPO proceeds to survive. It is a company with its own financial strength that can afford to wait for the market window to open under better conditions.
The window is there, but you have to know when to open it
The IPO market in the crypto sector isn’t closed, but it isn’t wide open either. BitGo’s experience showed that it is possible to go public, but also that the road after the IPO can be tough. In an industry where narrative matters as much as the numbers, going public at a time of weakness can leave a lasting mark on a company for years to come.
Ledger seems to understand this. Its pause isn’t a sign that something is wrong within the company. It’s a sign that its leaders know how to read the situation. CEO Pascal Gauthier had told Bloomberg in March that listing in the U.S. was «a serious consideration.» It still is. It’s just that the time isn’t right yet.
And in a market where poor timing can be costly, waiting is sometimes the smartest decision a company can make.