Hey Fintech Friends,

Circle’s IPO will go down in the history books. Priced at $31 a share at the IPO, the stock briefly touched $300 before settling just under $200.

And yet, all I hear are bear cases with most of them centered around interest rates falling and Circle paying half of its revenue to Coinbase for the distribution of USDC.

No one is standing up for Circle, despite USDC’s central role in finally pushing financial infrastructure onchain.

So here’s my bull case. Feel free to throw stones at me on Twitter.

Jevgenijs

What is Circle?

Circle is the company behind USDC, a digital dollar, or stablecoin, used in DeFi, trading and payments. With more than $60 billion in circulation, USDC ranks as the second-largest stablecoin globally.

Circle was founded in 2013 with the idea of making Bitcoin easier to use for everyday payments. At the time, it launched a consumer-facing app that let people buy, sell, and send Bitcoin. But as crypto evolved, so did Circle’s vision.

In 2018, the company partnered with Coinbase to launch USDC, a regulated, dollar-backed stablecoin. That marked a major pivot toward infrastructure and financial services, with Circle focusing on building the plumbing for an onchain economy.

"We envisioned the development of an “HTTP for Money,” a protocol for dollars and other fiat digital currency tokens that would provide an open and programmable infrastructure to rebuild the global financial system in the image of the internet."

Circle, Form S-1