Bullish CEO Tom Farley said the crypto industry could see more projects from large companies, which could lead to much less fragmentation in the sector in the coming months.
“I was in the currency sector during a period of continued massive consolidation…the same thing is about to happen with cryptocurrencies,” Farley said in an interview with CNBC on Friday.
Farley, who served as president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) until 2018, said the recent decline in the crypto market will be a key catalyst, with Bitcoin (BTC) trading at $69,405 at press time, down nearly 45% from its all-time high of $126,100 in October, according to CoinMarketCap.
Farley says integration should have happened already
But he said the industry consolidation should have happened sooner, but high valuations continue to create false optimism. “It should have happened a year or two ago,” he said.
Tom Farley told CNBC on Thursday. sauce: tom farley
“People were still holding out hope that they would get the 2020 valuation, so we would be having conversations with companies and saying, 'We have $10 million in sales but we're not growing, we want $200 million to buy the company,'” he said.
“That dream is going to end,” Farley said, adding, “People are going to realize they don't have a business, they have a product, they need to merge, they need to scale, and that's going to happen.”
Consolidation in the cryptocurrency industry could result in a two-way solution. Underperforming projects may be absorbed by larger companies, but this process can lead to attrition, layoffs, and industry turmoil as companies merge or downsize.
Related: Individual cryptocurrency investors are trying to “meta-analyze” the cryptocurrency crash: Santiment
Eva Oberholzer, chief investment officer at venture capital firm Ajna Capital, told Cointelegraph in September 2025 that VC firms are becoming more selective in the crypto projects they invest in as the market matures.
“Like every cycle we've seen in other technologies so far, cryptocurrencies are reaching different stages, so it's more difficult,” Oberholzer told Cointelegraph.
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