USDC's Circle Just Filed to IPO. Would It Make a Good Investment?

On Wednesday, USDC stablecoin issuer Circle filed for an initial public offering with the SEC. Its financials show the headwinds and tailwinds it faces as competition heats up.

USDC stablecoin issuer Circle has filed for an initial public offering with the SEC, as Trump’s tariffs cause turmoil in the markets and stablecoin bills make their way through Congress, promising to upend competition. 

The information in Circle’s prospectus shows a company that has few aces up its sleeve, a lot of business deals to make, and a perhaps lofty valuation.

Omar Kanji, Partner at Dragonfly, joined the show to explain:

• How Circle can get USDC into the hands of users

• Circle’s staggering regulatory compliance costs vs. the likes of Tether

• Circle’s S-1 valuation of $5 billion

• Forthcoming regulatory clarity and how it changes the stablecoin game

• The potential impact of tariffs on Circle’s success

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Now, let’s get into this week’s news! In today’s edition:

• 📉 Crypto sours on Trump’s tariffs

• 💸 Could bitcoin finally unseat the dollar?

• ⌛ SEC and Gemini ask for a pause

• 🎮 GME softens on Gamestop’s bitcoin buying spree

• ⛏️Trump family wants to mine bitcoin

• 🏖️ Fidelity lets savers invest in crypto for retirement

• 🥊 Congress fights over stablecoin bailouts

Crypto Sours on Trump’s Tariffs

U.S. President Trump’s long-awaited “Liberation Day” tariffs, which included a 10% across-the-board tariff and widespread reciprocal tariffs targeted at specific countries, immediately reverberated across global markets. Crypto was particularly hard-hit because it was one of the few ways for traders to express market sentiments right after the announcement, which came following market close on Thursday.

As of Thursday evening, bitcoin is down 5.69% as it tries to stay above $80,000, ether is down 6.91%, and solana has fallen by 13%. Large-scale indices such as the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 are down 5.91% and 4.84%, respectively.

Traders are anticipating a prolonged period of economic stagnation. The U.S. now has a 47% chance of incurring a recession in 2025, according to prediction site Polymarket. 

As difficult as this period may be, such an economic climate could finally provide bitcoin with a chance to prove its worth as a store of value, particularly if the economy falls into stagflation for the first time since the Arab oil embargo in 1973.

“Much like the 1970s was a breakout period for gold [which had an average annualized 31% return], I believe that the coming decade will be a breakout period for bitcoin,” said Zach Pandl, head of research at Galaxy, in an interview with Unchained. “It’s the right macro asset at the right time, and we have significant improvements in market structure creating more investor access to the product.”

Will Bitcoin Finally Threaten the Dollar?

Bitcoin could unseat the dollar, at least if BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is to be believed. In his eagerly awaited and thoroughly scrutinized annual shareholder letter, the leader of the $11.5 trillion asset manager wrote that “if the U.S. doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin.” 

This warning comes at a critical time for the U.S. dollar — not only because of the global economic uncertainty unleashed by Trump’s tariffs, but also because of rumored plans behind the scenes in Washington, D.C., to weaken the U.S. dollar as a way of making American exports more competitive.

Unchained reported this week on a plan previously proposed by Stephen Miran, chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, to circumvent the government’s reliance on the U.S. Federal Reserve to reduce interest rates to stimulate growth. This proposal is part of a broader plan to develop what Miran called the “Mar-a-Lago Accord,” which is designed to make the U.S. dollar drop in value vis-a-vis other world currencies. The plan was laid out in a paper from November 2024, when he was a strategist at Hudson Bay Capital and prior to his White House appointment. In the paper, he also suggested that the U.S. government charge foreign purchasers of U.S. Treasuries as a way to depress the U.S. dollar. 

For Larry Fink, his bitcoin pronouncement has a bit of self-interest since BlackRock operates the largest spot bitcoin ETF in the world with assets under management of $10.5 trillion, plus the company just incorporated bitcoin into one of its model portfolio accounts that offers exposure to alternative assets.

SEC and Gemini Ask for a Timeout

Another SEC action against a prominent crypto firm looks as if it is close to a resolution. On Tuesday, crypto exchange Gemini and the SEC filed a joint request for a 60-day “stay of all deadlines in this case to allow the parties to explore a potential resolution.”

In taking this step, the SEC is using the same tactic that it employed in its cases against Binance and Tron, both of which were granted. 

The SEC initially sued Gemini, along with the Digital Currency Group-owned trading firm Genesis Global Capital, in January 2023 over what it called “the unregistered offer and sale of securities to retail investors through the Gemini Earn crypto asset lending program.” The complaint demonstrated that in December 2020, the two firms entered into an agreement where Gemini would loan customer funds to Genesis in exchange for interest that would be paid back to investors. However, the assets, which totaled $900 million from 340,000 customers, ended up getting locked at Genesis in 2022, as the company didn’t have enough liquid assets to meet redemption requests as part of the unraveling and fallout of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.

The company eventually enabled customer withdrawals in 2024 as part of its bankruptcy proceedings.

The “stay” action comes just two months after the SEC closed a separate investigation into Gemini, ostensibly to evaluate whether it was selling unregistered securities, without recommending an enforcement action.

In other SEC news, the regulator officially dropped its cases against crypto exchange Kraken, Ethereum development studio ConsenSys, and trading firm Cumberland DRW. All three firms had noted in recent weeks that these dismissals were forthcoming, making the actual news a formality.

Additionally, the nomination of crypto-friendly businessman Paul Atkins to become SEC Chair advanced out of committee on Thursday to a full senate vote. 

Gamers Not Impressed by GameStop’s Debt Package

A trendy strategy in the corporate world is to follow Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly known as MicroStrategy) and put bitcoin on the corporate balance sheet, but not everybody is impressed with that approach. 

Memestock GameStop announced on March 27 that it planned to raise between $1.3-$1.5 billion in convertible senior notes paying 0% interest “for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of bitcoin in a manner consistent with GameStop’s Investment Policy.”

According to an SEC filing, the company successfully completed the sale on April 1, netting $1.48 billion for the already cash-rich company.

However, GME investors were less than enthused. Since the announcement, the stock is down 13.27%.

But that is not the only big player in the corporate finance world buying bitcoin. Bitcoin miner MARA, which already has 47,600 bitcoin ($3.9 billion) on its balance sheet, announced a plan to sell $2 billion in stock to fund additional bitcoin purchases. 

Trump Family Gets Into the Bitcoin Mining Game

The Trump family crypto empire is expanding. The U.S. president’s sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. have partnered with bitcoin miner Hut8 to launch a new bitcoin mining joint venture called American Bitcoin.

American Bitcoin aims to “become the world’s largest, most efficient pure-play Bitcoin miner while building a robust strategic Bitcoin reserve,” according to a Hut8 press release.

For the Trump family, this entry into the mining market comes at a time of challenging economics. Hashrate, a metric of the total computing power on the network, continues to set all-time highs as it approaches 900 million terahashes per second and the price of bitcoin sits in the low $80,000s, down over 20% from its all-time high in January. This means that the mining environment is increasingly competitive while the payoff remains stagnant. Tariffs are also expected to impact U.S. Bitcoin miners who have their supply chain rooted in Asia — countries such as China, Thailand, and Malaysia are being hit with significant tariffs. 

Reuters also reported this week that the Trump family has solidified its control over its decentralized finance platform World Liberty Financial. DT Marks DeFi LLC, an entity linked to Donald Trump and his family, now holds a 60% equity stake in WLF Holdco LLC, which replaces World Liberty Financial co-founders, Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, as controlling parties.

Fidelity Lets Investors Put Crypto in Their Retirement Accounts

Boston-based asset manager Fidelity Investments is now letting individual retirement account investors put crypto assets such as bitcoin, ether, and litecoin into three different types of IRAs. 

"Fidelity is committed to offering investment products and solutions to meet the changing needs and interests of our customers, accompanied by education and support," a Fidelity spokesperson told The Block.

However, there are important considerations for investors to weigh before putting assets into these tax advantaged accounts. Investors for retirement typically look to tamp down risk as they get older, something that can be in conflict with volatile assets such as bitcoin.

Congress Bickers Over Whether to Bail Out Stablecoins

Members of the House Financial Services Committee feuded over whether or not to add an amendment banning Congress from bailing out stablecoin issuers, should they become insolvent, as part of the STABLE Act, a proposed piece of legislation to regulate the $235 billion stablecoin market, in a markup session on Wednesday. 

None of the three amendments raised by Democratic representatives Brad Sherman, Bill Foster, and Stephen Lynch were approved. Still, the discussion was illustrative because it highlighted Democratic frustration with the close ties between the crypto industry and many of their counterparts on the committee, as well as general concerns about the stability of the crypto industry overall.

Members of Congress who pushed back against the amendments, such as committee chair French Hill, argued that the bill already prohibited bailouts, so a separate amendment was unnecessary.

In their arguments, several Democratic legislators pointed to the $60 billion stablecoin USDC, issued by the company Circle Internet Financial Limited, which just filed to go public, as a cautionary example. Its price fell to $0.88 after the run on Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 because $3.3 billion of its $32 billion in reserves held at the failed bank were uninsured. That led to a run on the asset. The FDIC ultimately took over the bank to make depositors, including Circle, whole. 

Watch the weekly recap on YouTube!