Stablecoin’s first IPO is here

Source: Cailianshe

Circle was founded in October 2013 by Jeremy Allaire (CEO) and Sean Neville (co-founder), focusing on blockchain technology and stablecoins. In 2018, Circle and Coinbase co-founded the Centre Alliance to launch USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin backed by the US dollar 1:1. From the beginning, it was benchmarked against Tether's USDT, claiming to be more compliant and transparent.

In 2023, the Centre Alliance was dissolved, and Circle became the only issuer and manager of USDC. As of April 2025, USDC has become the world's second largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, with a market value of approximately US$60.9 billion, second only to Tether's USDT.

The Silicon Valley Bank crisis in 2023 gave Circle the idea of ​​going public. At that time, the $3.3 billion that Circle had in the bank was "frozen" for a time, causing USDC to be unpegged. Circle's executives immediately realized that if they wanted to truly gain a foothold in the global stablecoin competition, they must rely on the three magic weapons of "license + listing + transparency" instead of simply relying on the support of the crypto community.

In 2025, on April 1, local time in the United States, Circle submitted an S-1 form to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, applying for listing on the New York Stock Exchange (stock code CRCL), and hired top investment banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup as underwriters for the IPO.

Circle reported that by the end of 2024, its stablecoin-related business revenue was $1.7 billion, accounting for 99.1% of total revenue; on May 27, Circle announced the terms of its IPO, planning to issue 24 million shares (60% of which are in the secondary market), of which 9.6 million shares are newly issued by the company and 14.4 million shares are sold by existing shareholders, with an issue price range of $24 to $26, raising $600 million. Based on the middle value of the proposed range, Circle's fully diluted market value will reach $6.2 billion.

The IPO attracted the attention of institutional investors including Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management, which expressed its intention to subscribe to up to $150 million in shares.

Guosheng Securities said that if Circle is successfully listed this time, it will further promote the development of the US stablecoin market and accelerate the acceptance of stablecoins by traditional financial users, especially institutional users. The scale of the stablecoin market has achieved rapid growth in the past few years. From the perspective of scale composition, USDT and USDC are the main products in the market. Since its birth, stablecoins have become an important tool for participants in the cryptocurrency market - providing value reserves and pricing tools. At the same time, as margin for various cryptocurrency spot/futures transactions, they are the most important type of cryptocurrency tools. If Circle is successfully listed, it will be an important positive for the market.

Stablecoins connect traditional finance and crypto ecology. Multiple RWA projects are accelerating their implementation

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies anchored to legal currencies or assets. They have price stability and blockchain compatibility. They are widely used in transactions, settlements and value storage. In essence, they tokenize real-world legal currencies or assets on the chain and are regarded as "a bridge between traditional finance and crypto ecology".

Stablecoins were originally designed mainly for the field of crypto assets, but in recent years they have quickly entered traditional financial fields such as payment. Due to its characteristics of point-to-point payment, high payment efficiency and low cost, relatively stable currency value, and close connection with the crypto asset industry, stablecoins are increasingly widely used in conventional financial activities such as cross-border payments and foreign exchange savings, becoming an ideal choice for international payments and asset reserves. They are also important in new financial activities such as decentralized finance (DeFi).

Globally, the strategic position and market size of stablecoins continue to rise. According to statistics from Orient Securities (9.500, 0.17, 1.82%), as of May 31, 2025, the global market value of stablecoins exceeded US$250 billion, an increase of more than US$40 billion from the end of 2024.

From 2024 to 2025, the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA/Real-World Assets, that is, digitizing and chaining real assets through blockchain technology) will be accelerated in China and abroad. Among them, the two major stablecoins USDT and USDC pegged to the US dollar had a market value of more than 153 billion US dollars and 61 billion US dollars respectively as of May 31, accounting for more than 85% of the total market value of global stablecoins.

Overseas, the United States and the European Union are actively promoting their respective stablecoin bills, trying to seize the initiative in the global stablecoin market. Among them, the US stablecoin bill focuses on maintaining the leadership of the US dollar in the digital economy, making the US dollar stablecoin a tool for global digital payments, and continuing the hegemony of the US dollar. At the same time, institutions such as Robinhood and BlackRock promote unified supervision and high-performance chain technology applications, and chains such as Solana have become the first choice for RWA infrastructure.

my country's RWA market began to accelerate the implementation of multiple projects in 2024. Some examples include: Longxin Group (16.920, -0.26, -1.51%) and Ant Digital New Energy RWA; Xinxin Energy (7.970, 0.07, 0.89%) and Ant Digital Photovoltaic Green Asset RWA; Dalian Xiaoping Island Digital Island Project; Shanghai Zuo'an Xinhui "Malu Grape RWA" project; Xunying Group's battery swap asset RWA; Yuanlong Yatu (18.280, -0.87, -4.54%) explores the digitization of IP cultural and creative assets and promotes the export of cultural asset RWA.

At the policy level, the Action Plan for High-Quality Development of Digital Finance proposes to support RWA innovation and emphasizes compliance and data rights confirmation; the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government published the Stablecoin Ordinance in the Gazette on May 30, which means that the Stablecoin Ordinance has officially become a law.

CITIC Securities (25.590, 0.07, 0.27%) Research Report believes that Hong Kong, China and the United States have recently promoted the legislative process of stablecoin-related bills to varying degrees. Stablecoins can provide a stable currency value trading method for RWA token assets, enhance market liquidity, and help promote the further implementation of RWA issuance projects by mainland Chinese companies in Hong Kong. At the same time, the Stablecoin Act is expected to indirectly promote the construction of digital currency-related payment and settlement interfaces in the Hong Kong financial industry, and financial IT companies with experience in digital currency/digital RMB cross-border settlement and supply chain financial projects are expected to benefit.

Huaxi Securities (8.330, 0.10, 1.22%) said that RWA will become the core hub linking the real economy and digital finance. In the future, RWA tokens will be expanded to more subdivided scenarios, such as carbon assets, supply chains and intellectual property rights, and superimposed with AI and large models on the chain to achieve automatic valuation and intelligent liquidation, activating the digital liquidity of trillion-level physical assets.