The first IPO of stablecoin is here

Source: Cailianshe

Founded in October 2013, Circle is founded by Jeremy Allaire (CEO) and Sean Neville (Co-founder), focusing on blockchain technology and stablecoins. In 2018, Circle and Coinbase jointly founded the Centre Alliance to launch USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin guaranteed 1:1 USD, was benchmarked against Tether's USDT from the beginning, proclaiming that it is more compliant and transparent.

In 2023, the Centre Alliance was dissolved and Circle became the only issuing and managing party 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 TEDA's USDT.

The Silicon Valley banking crisis in 2023 gave Circle the idea of ​​going public. At that time, the US$3.3 billion that Circle had existed in the bank was "frozen", causing USDC to dean. Circle executives immediately realized that if they want to truly gain a foothold in the global stablecoin competition, they must rely on the three magic weapons of "license + listing + transparency", rather than relying solely on the support of the encryption circle.

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

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

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

Guosheng Securities said that if the Circle is successfully listed, it will further promote the development of the US stablecoin market and accelerate the acceptance process of traditional financial users, especially institutional users, of stablecoin. The stablecoin market size has grown rapidly in the past few years. From the perspective of scale composition, USDT and USDC are the main products of the market. Since its birth, stablecoins have become an important tool for participants in the cryptocurrency market - providing value reserves and pricing tools, and serving as margin for various cryptocurrencies spot/futures trading, it is the most important type of cryptocurrency tools. If Circle is successfully listed, it will be an important benefit to the market.

Stablecoins connect traditional finance and crypto ecosystems to

accelerate implementation of multiple RWA projects

Stable coins are cryptocurrencies anchored with fiat currency or assets. They have price stability and blockchain compatibility. They are widely used in transactions, settlements and value storage. The essence is to tokenize real- world fiat currency or assets on-chain and are regarded as "a bridge between traditional finance and the crypto ecosystem."

Stablecoin design was mainly used in the field of crypto assets at the beginning, but in recent years, it has quickly entered traditional financial fields such as payments. Due to its peer-to-peer payment, high payment efficiency, low cost, relatively stable currency value, and close ties with the crypto asset industry, stablecoins are becoming more and more 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. It is also important to use in new financial activities such as decentralized finance (DeFi).

From a global perspective, the strategic position and market size of stablecoins are constantly rising. According to statistics from Oriental Securities (9.500, 0.17, 1.82%), as of May 31, 2025, the global stablecoin market value 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, the tokenization of real-world assets through blockchain technology and on-chain) will accelerate in China and foreign countries. Among them, the two major stablecoins pegged to the US dollar, USDT and USDC, have market valued over US$153 billion and US$61 billion respectively as of May 31, accounting for more than 85% of the total global stablecoins market value.

Overseas, the United States and the European Union are actively promoting their respective stablecoin bills in an attempt 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, building the US dollar stablecoin into a tool for global digital payments, and continuing the hegemony of the US dollar. At the same time, institutions such as Robinhood, BlackRock and other institutions promote unified supervision and high-performance chain technology application, and chains such as Solana have become the first choice for RWA infrastructure.

my country's RWA market has begun to accelerate the implementation of multiple projects in 2024. Some cases include: Langxin Group (16.920, -0.26, -1.51%) and Ant Digital Technology New Energy RWA; GCL Energy (7.970, 0.07, 0.89%) and Ant Digital Technology Photovoltaic Green Asset RWA; Dalian Xiaoping Island Digital Island Project; Shanghai Zuoan Xinhui's "Malu Grape RWA" project; Xunying Group's battery swap asset RWA; Yuanlong Yattu (18.280, -0.87, -4.54%) explores the digitalization of IP cultural and creative assets and promotes the RWA to go overseas.

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

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

West China Securities (8.330, 0.10, 1.22%) said that RWA will become the core hub connecting the real economy and digital finance. In the future, RWA tokens will expand to more segmented scenarios, such as carbon assets, supply chains and intellectual property rights, superimposed on AI and on-chain large models to achieve automatic valuation and intelligent liquidation, and activate the digital liquidity of trillions of physical assets.