USDC's Circle Just Filed to IPO. Would It Make a Good Investment? - Ep. 812

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 its 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 Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! BitKey: Use code UNCHAINED for 20% off FalconX Mantle Guest Omar Kanji, Partner at Dragonfly Links Previous coverage on Unchained: Congress Bickers Over Whether to Bail Out Stablecoins How a Radical Proposal in Trump’s World Could Hurt Stablecoins, but Boost Bitcoin Coinbase Aims to Jointly Pass Market Structure and Stablecoin Legislation in Congress Stablecoin Bills Could Squeeze Out $140 Billion Tether Circle files an initial public offering SEC: Circle’s S-1 Filing Coindesk: Circle is going public Fortune: 5 key takeaways X @dom_kwok: Circle’s IPO is historic Bloomberg: Bitcoin Succumbs to Risk Asset Slump as Trump Sets Tariffs Timestamps: 🤝 0:00 Introduction 🫰 4:04 Circle’s shockingly high distribution costs for USDC 💲 7:11 How much does Circle’s revenue depend on interest rates? 🤯 10:46 Circle’s staggering regulatory compliance costs vs. the likes of Tether 📈 16:02 How imminent regulatory clarity for stablecoins helps and hurts Circle 🫤 23:11 Is Circle’s $5 billion valuation realistic? ⚖️ 25:21 How stablecoin competition might look after stablecoin bills become law 😰 28:14 How will Trump’s tariffs affect Circle’s IPO? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone. Thank you for supporting Unchained, where we do our best to help you stay on top of
0:05.8	crypto news. If you enjoy the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment right now
0:11.4	to leave us a five-star review. This helps other listeners discover Unchained. And who knows,
0:17.5	you may hear me read your review on an upcoming episode.
0:23.9	Well, what did you think of that valuation?
0:27.3	Because I saw also some takes out that on crypto Twitter.
0:28.1	Yeah.
0:29.4	I mean, I think five's high.
0:32.6	I have looked it in the past.
0:35.8	I am probably a buyer somewhere between two and three.
0:38.3	But I don't know if the market gets there. I think there is part of this story, which is there is not pure place stable coin exposure
0:47.3	in the public markets today.
0:49.3	And if you want that, there's ways to get it.
0:52.3	Like you can obviously become an investor in Coinbase and you get this nice little revenue
0:57.2	share that flows in from Circle.
0:59.9	You can invest in PayPal, which obviously has their staple point today.
1:03.2	There's a number of different equities that you can invest into if you want that type of exposure,
1:07.8	but there's nothing as pure play as investing in Circle. And so there's a world in
1:12.0	which Circle is this limited asset. You know, there's not a lot of different ways to express this
1:17.5	view that stable coins are going to eat traditional payments. And so then if you want that,
1:22.5	maybe there's a world in which you're like, okay, there are challenges in a variety of different senses,
1:28.6	and that's okay. I want to own this business in this category that's certainly going to keep
	...

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