Circle’s $1.1B IPO Surges Past Expectations

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 💰 Circle wows Wall Street

• 💼 Ethereum: Spend less, stake more

• 📊 JPMorgan says yes to crypto collateral

• 🦅 Trump stablecoin’s big airdrop

• 🎯 Crypto stock surge: Who wins?

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Circle IPO Nets $1.1B as It Prices Share Sale Above Target Range

Stablecoin issuer Circle priced its IPO at $31 per share late on Wednesday, $3 above the top of a recently revised range of $27 to $28 per share, and sold 34 million shares to raise around $1.1 billion.

Strong demand prompted the stablecoin issuer to scale up its IPO from an original allocation of 24 million shares. 

Circle is now valued at $6.8 billion to $8 billion on a fully diluted basis.

“It looks like Circle’s IPO is 25x oversubscribed, valuing the company at around $7b,” venture capitalist and entrepreneur Chamath Palihapitiya said on X. “If someone can buy it for even $12-13b, that’s a steal, imo, for what this business could be worth in 20 years.” 

“Circle has built the entire market structure for stablecoins well before it will formally exist in the U.S. (i.e. ahead of the GENIUS bill),” Palihapitiya said.

Ethereum Foundation Unveils New Treasury Policy

The Ethereum Foundation expects the next two years to be “pivotal” for the Ethereum ecosystem as a result of both internal reforms and the broader evolution of the blockchain landscape.

In a blog detailing an updated treasury policy on Wednesday, the foundation said it would now aim to reduce its annual operating expenses as a percentage of its total treasury. The current target stands at 15%, with a buffer of two-and-a-half years in reserve. 

The move will essentially determine how much fiat and ETH the foundation holds, and feed into the cadence of its ETH sales. 

The foundation, which this week rebranded its research and development division as Protocol, plans eventually to reduce its annual operating expenses to a long-term baseline of 5%, a similar level to that of other endowment-based organizations.

Aside from holding ETH, the foundation said it intended increasingly to deploy assets on staking and decentralized finance platforms.

“We will frequently reallocate funds between protocols for reasons such as changing market conditions, diversification, or new yield opportunities,” the foundation said. “Withdrawals should be understood in this context and not as anti-endorsements.”

JPMorgan to Accept Crypto ETFs as Loan Collateral: Report

Wall Street banking giant JPMorgan is set to allow its trading and wealth management clients to use crypto-linked assets — specifically shares of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds — as collateral for loans. 

The bank will begin by accepting shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the biggest U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF, with more than $70 billion of assets under management, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The bank will also start factoring clients’ crypto holdings into net worth and liquidity calculations, treating them similarly to traditional assets such as stocks, real estate, and art, when assessing their borrowing capacity.

Although recent U.S. cryptocurrency policy changes have encouraged more traditional finance players to be more welcoming of crypto, JPMorgan’s move is notable, given CEO Jamie Dimon’s long-standing skepticism about bitcoin.

During JPMorgan’s annual investor day last month, Dimon said he would allow the bank’s clients to buy bitcoin, but that the lender would not custody it.

“I don’t think you should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke,” he said. “I defend your right to buy Bitcoin.” 

Trump-Backed World Liberty Financial Launches Major USD1 Airdrop

World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform backed by U.S. President Donald Trump and run by members of his family, carried out a massive airdrop tied to its stablecoin, USD1, on Wednesday.

Around 85,000 wallets that participated in the sale of the organization’s governance token, WLFI, and which passed a know-your-customer process received the airdrop. 

Each wallet was credited with $47 of USD1 stablecoins, a figure chosen to reference Trump’s position as the 47th President of the United States. The total value of the airdrop was an estimated $4 million.

The airdrop comes after being proposed and overwhelmingly approved by the WLFI community, with 99.96% of 12,000 voters in favour.

USD1 is World Liberty Financial’s flagship stablecoin, backed by U.S. Treasuries, cash, and equivalent assets, and custodied by regulated trust company BitGo. 

It is currently the seventh-biggest stablecoin by market cap, despite having been launched only in April.

Crypto Treasury Execs May Cash in as Stocks Soar, But Will Shareholders Be Cheated?

Upexi, a consumer products company offering medicinal mushrooms and caffeine alternatives, had been struggling for years. Between April 2020 and the beginning of April this year, its stock fell 98.02%. But that all changed on April 21, when it announced the creation of a SOL treasury strategy with an initial deployment of $100 million. Since that day, its stock is up more than 300%.

Some of the company’s previous shareholders and early adopters are reaping the benefits of that appreciation, but perhaps nobody is poised to benefit as much as its executives. The same is true for almost all companies riding crypto’s bubble.

So, with equity windfalls on the table and few clear rules, will crypto’s newest darlings reward long-term value or just cash out quickly?

• 🇨🇳 Little-known Chinese mobility company Webus this week filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $300 million via debt for an XRP treasury strategy that includes Ripple payment integration and cross-border settlement tools, joining other firms such as VivoPower and Wellgistics in adopting XRP.

• 💥 Memecoins tied to Pump.fun dropped by as much as 7% after reports of a potential $1 billion token raise at a $4 billion valuation, with traders fearing dilution and selling pressure for top tokens such as FARTCOIN and PNUT.

• 🇷🇺 Moscow’s stock exchange operator on Wednesday introduced dollar-quoted, ruble-settled bitcoin futures tied to a U.S. exchange-traded fund, offering quarterly contracts to qualified investors following regulatory approval for crypto derivatives in Russia.

• 🐻 Berachain activated its Bectra hard fork to adopt Ethereum’s Pectra execution upgrades on Wednesday, enabling smart wallet features and batching for users while preserving compatibility for 200-plus apps and maintaining its unique proof-of-liquidity model.

• 🗽 Crypto gateway MoonPay has obtained a BitLicense from New York State, granting it the ability to offer crypto services directly across all 50 U.S. states without intermediaries, joining Coinbase, Circle, and Ripple in meeting the state’s demanding compliance standards.

• ⚖️ The Singapore High Court on Wednesday rejected WazirX’s restructuring proposal involving a decentralized exchange and recovery tokens, pushing creditor repayments that had been expected in April into uncertainty and raising the risk of liquidation and reduced asset recovery.

• ⚡ Pakistan unveiled plans to convert 2,000 megawatts of surplus electricity into a bitcoin reserve and tech investment magnet through its new Crypto Council, despite warnings about International Monetary Fund concerns and exposure to crypto volatility.

• 🧪 Crypto startup Rails on Wednesday launched a hybrid trading platform using centralized order matching and on-chain settlement after securing $14 million from backers including Kraken and CMCC Global to support its total $20 million raise.

• 🏦 Crypto derivatives protocol 3Jane raised $5.2 million from Paradigm to launch a USDC credit protocol that assesses borrower eligibility using financial data across DeFi, centralized exchanges, and banking, instead of onchain collateral.

1. More Return With Less Risk? By Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise

2. “American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets: From Blueprint to a Functional‬‭ Framework” — Testimony of Vivek Raman‬,‭ co-founder and CEO of TradFi-Ethereum business development platform Etherealize,‬ before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services‬