Circle made its public market debut Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker “CRCL,” pricing its shares at $31 — above the expected $24 to $26 range. The company sold around 34 million shares in the offering, for a valuation of $1.1 billion. Bloomberg pegs the total amount raised in the IPO at $6.2 billion. Circle initially planned to offer just 24 million Class A shares, with 9.6 million coming from the firm itself and the remainder from early stakeholders. But as demand soared, the offering ballooned to more than 10 times the original amount. This initial public offering (IPO) marks the second major crypto company to go public under the Trump administration, after eToro listed last month . The stablecoin issuer’s road to the public markets has been long. It first attempted to go public in 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). That deal eventually collapsed, though Circle never stopped pursuing its IPO ambitions. Circle issues USDC , the second-largest U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin in circulation, which has become a backbone for many crypto trading pairs and decentralized finance applications. Going public gives the company access to deeper capital markets and increased regulatory scrutiny — potentially helping shore up investor confidence in the wake of recent volatility in crypto markets. The firm’s entrance to the NYSE comes amid renewed interest in digital assets and as U.S. legislators weigh clearer rules for stablecoins and their issuers, potentially giving publicly traded issuers an edge. Sen. Bill Hagerty, the main sponsor of the Senate's stablecoin bill, said on Bloomberg earlier Wednesday that the Senate needs to pass that piece of legislation as soon as possible, arguing that it would protect consumers while keeping more issuers and other companies in the U.S. "We have broad agreement, with respect to the content of this stablecoin legislation," he said. "This is going to, I think, take us into the 21st century, in terms of upgrading our payment systems ... Because every one of these stablecoins will be backed up dollar for dollar with U.S. treasuries." Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy . UPDATE (June 4, 2025, 22:18 UTC): Adds Hagerty comment.
