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(Incorporated in Delaware)
Circle Internet Corp., a cryptocurrency issuer, is known for USDC, its U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin. From the prospectus:
We operate one of the largest and most widely used stablecoin networks in the world. Anchored around USDC, our U.S. dollar-denominated payment stablecoin, our suite of stablecoins and related products together provide a network utility and application platform for a wide range of organizations to benefit from stablecoins and the new internet financial system. Through our partners and the broader ecosystem that supports and integrates into the Circle stablecoin network, we touch more than 600 million users around the world as of March 28, 2025. While we do not provide direct services to individuals (other than by redeeming USDC and EURC in our role as the redeemer of last resort), the Circle stablecoin network is one of the most widely used on the internet—as of March 28, 2025, USDC has been used for more than $25 trillion in on-chain transactions.
From the founder’s letter – by co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire (the letter is in the prospectus):
Today, Circle is a globally recognized and respected brand and company, with a reputation for integrity and transparency, as both an advocate and leader in building the internet financial system.
Since its launch in 2018, USDC, as the core of the Circle stablecoin network, has been used for more than $25 trillion in on-chain transactions as of March 28, 2025. Millions of end-users use USDC for payments, settlements, and as a digital dollar store of value. Thousands of companies and developers have integrated with USDC, creating a thriving ecosystem. Major payments companies, enterprise technology firms, consumer internet applications, financial technology (“FinTech”) firms, and digital asset companies use Circle technology to power solutions built on USDC.
And USDC has continued to be built on strong market infrastructure and underlying liquidity, with Circle having minted more than $504.3 billion of USDC and redeemed more than $464.4 billion of USDC from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2024—redemptions that have always been one-for-one with the U.S. dollar.
We have faced challenges. For example, in 2023, USDC went through an extended period of circulation decline related to a number of factors, including an increase in U.S. short-term interest rates, a decline in digital asset prices, and an associated decline in leverage in the digital asset trading ecosystem, as well as the impact of a temporary price dislocation in the secondary markets in March 2023 resulting from the collapse of certain U.S. regional banks that caused some market share to move to a competitor. We will no doubt continue to face challenges in the future. Nonetheless, the growth of USDC and the Circle stablecoin network has shown resilience and allowed us to become a strong and thriving business in a short period of time. With just $15.4 million in revenue in 2020, we grew to $84.9 million in revenue and reserve income in 2021, $772.0 million in revenue and reserve income in 2022, $1.5 billion in revenue and reserve income in 2023, and $1.7 billion in revenue and reserve income in 2024. In 2024, we reported $156 million in net income and $285 million in Adjusted EBITDA. As of December 31, 2024, we had total liquidity sources of $1,045 million, which consisted of $751 million in cash and cash equivalents and $294 million in cash and cash equivalents segregated for corporate-held stablecoins. During this time, we have also built a team with diverse and global backgrounds, spanning more than a dozen countries and more than 35 U.S. states and territories. This team heralds from leading internet, technology, and financial services firms, and we believe brings the necessary skills to build this new internet financial system.
Circle is a product- and technology-led company, and we have made and will continue to make significant investments in product and technology development and build long-term value in the market.
Becoming a public company
In many respects, Circle has for a long time been under intense public scrutiny—the demands of operating an always-on, regulated digital dollar infrastructure require that Circle operates with high levels of transparency—as well as significant regulatory supervision by government agencies spanning the United States and the world. As a global institution, we take our role and responsibility as a steward of financial assets incredibly seriously.
For Circle, becoming a publicly traded corporation on the New York Stock Exchange is a continuation of our desire to operate with the greatest transparency and accountability possible. We are building what we believe to be critical infrastructure for the financial system, and we seek to work with leading companies and governments around the world in shaping and building this new internet financial system. Operating as a U.S.-listed public company represents our continued dedication to transparency and accountability, as we will become subject to the reporting, corporate governance, and other requirements that are applicable to a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The new internet financial system
Circle’s mission is to increase global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of value. We believe that with the advent of blockchain networks, the global financial system can be rebuilt on the principles of the internet—those of open software and public networks—to the benefit of all of society. This new internet financial system has the potential to address the structural inefficiencies of the legacy financial system, enabling value to be exchanged more quickly, more cheaply, more safely, and in new, innovative ways—thereby increasing both the benefit of and access to the financial system for all people and all businesses across the globe.
Finance is fundamentally built upon the movement of money in the form of the transmission of data, wrapped in trust, and protected by regulation. Finance is built upon the movement of money. In modern digital finance, the movement of money is the movement of data between accounts in private, permissioned databases. This movement of money is typically tightly controlled and regulated by individual nations to ensure safety and soundness of the financial system and to protect against abuse by bad actors. Although the infrastructure system enabling this movement of money is critical to the functioning of the existing financial system and powers one of the largest sectors in the global economy, the technology underpinning this system in large part dates from the 1970s and 1980s.
The USDC “digital dollar” issued by us is a leading payment stablecoin, with $43.9 billion in circulation across 4.3 million meaningful wallets, as of December 31, 2024.
Note: Net income and revenue are in U.S. dollars for the 12 months that ended Dec. 31, 2024.
(Note: Circle Internet Corp. filed its S-1 on April 1, 2025, without disclosing the terms. Estimated IPO proceeds are $100.0 million, but some IPO pros believe that this IPO could raise about $700 million.)
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