Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, has filed a draft registration statement with the SEC to go public. Circle previously planned to go public via a SPAC which fell through.
Yesterday’s SEC approval of the first spot Bitcoin ETFs could create a supportive environment for a stock listing.
Unlike when it first planned to list, Circle should now be rather profitable. After all, it earns more than 4% on $25 billion of stablecoin reserves.
The news comes the day after Ripple said it was doing a share buyback. Both indicate some early investors are keen to take out profits. A major Circle investor is the Digital Currency Group (DCG), which fell on hard times following the collapse of Genesis. DCG recently sold Coindesk.
Meanwhile, Circle’s USDC is the second largest stablecoin and the largest regulated stablecoin.
Last year Circle’s USDC lost its peg when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, holding $3.3 billion in USDC cash. That severely dented the stablecoin’s market capitalization, which dropped from $44 billion in March to $25 billion in October and has remained around that level. The unregulated Tether stablecoin was the primary beneficiary.
Circle has started to look beyond the US dollar. It launched the EURC stablecoin out of the United States. It received provisional approval from the AMF to be a digital asset service provider in France late last year. Europe’s EU MiCA regulations will allow a company regulated in one country to operate throughout the EU.
Additionally, Circle recently announced a collaboration with Japan’s SBI. While the partners talked about circulating USDC within Japan, one can imagine the potential for a YENC.
