The News
Shares of stablecoin issuer Circle soared in its NYSE debut today, a validation of crypto’s newfound importance to the American financial system and a symptom of investors starved for new issuances during a long IPO drought.
Trading in the stock was halting just seconds after it began after the stock, which had been sold last night to IPO investors for $31 a share, opened at $69 and soared to nearly $76. The $31 price was below where Circle was previously valued by private investors.
In an interview off the NYSE trading floor with Semafor, CEO Jeremy Allaire said he worried that if the US doesn’t create a trusted and useful digital dollar — something his company’s main product, USD Coin, aims to be — it might lose the “digital currency space race” to China, which has a formidable lead over the US with its digital yuan.
“The digital dollar should be the highest utility money in the world,” he said. “We are believers in the strength and continued preeminence of the dollar in the global financial system, and in the internet financial system that’s being built up.”
It’s the digital version of a broader debate about the future of the dollar, as the global economy fractures under trade and geopolitical tensions. It’s also a politically expedient play for Allaire’s company, which, as the Financial Times notes, is quite exposed to the whims of central banks. A rival stablecoin issuer, Tether, has also latched onto the US-China rivalry.
The View From Jeremy Allaire
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Liz Hoffman: The House passed stablecoin legislation. What’s your expectation for what happens in the Senate?
Jeremy Allaire: The GENIUS Act had a bipartisan supermajority to get it to where it is, and we believe it’s an excellent piece of legislation. This is part of an effort by policymakers and governments around the world to integrate stablecoins as an M1-like electronic money type in the financial system. It represents a tremendous opportunity to have more companies, more financial institutions, more technology firms, build on this breakthrough technology.
Do you expect competition from the Trump family?
Circle has always faced competition. The position we’ve been able to build as a licensed, regulated, global firm — we think those remain strengths, and we’re very comfortable that we’re going to continue to be the leader. Becoming a public company is significant in terms of enhancing trust, transparency, and accountability.
Crypto is right on the cusp of going mainstream, but is still shot through with fraud and criminal-adjacent actors. Do you think you can fully drag it into the sunlight?
We aren’t focused on speculative trading or different types of digital assets. We’re trying to improve the financial system by building a new, electronic form of the dollar, and ultimately other fiat electronic money, to make the global economic system more fair and integrated. We saw, in the birth and growth of the internet, a huge range of things that people thought were useful — some of which became fundamental to all of our lives and some of which don’t exist anymore.
Do you worry that if the US doesn’t become the backbone of that global digital infrastructure that someone else, maybe the Chinese, will?
I do. The digital dollar should be the highest utility money in the world. We’re trying to cement in law a framework that assures that the United States … can win the digital- currency space race. We are believers in the strength and continued preeminence of the dollar in the global financial system, and in the internet financial system that’s being built up.