Circle announces plans for $4.5 billion listing
Circle, a very large payments solutions provider, has announced that it would be going for a listing via a special purpose acquisition vehicle (SPAC) which would value it at over $4.5 billion.
Circle has been in the news recently for having raised $440 million from various institutional investors in May 2021 and it has been one of the pioneers in the crypto space have chosen to adopt crypto payments very early in its life cycle. This decision seems to have paid off well when it decided to launch USDC as a stablecoin that is pegged to the dollar. This launch was timed very well which has helped USDC to grow as the second-most used stablecoin for crypto payments and transactions, behind USDT.
But USDC continues to grow in a very quick manner over the last year or so with over $22 billion worth of USDC in circulation as the fact that it is backed by a large and regulated company has improved the trust in it, for the users and the investors. This is evident by the number of investments that Circle has been able to attract over the last few months.
The listing is expected to yield $691 million for the company and once the formalities are completed, the company would be listed in the New York Stock exchange sometime in the last quarter of this year.
Circle has also been looking to launch partnerships with a variety of companies in the crypto space as well as tie-ups with Maps.me are also expected to boost its user base as people are likely to use Circle for their payments. Circle seems to be in a pretty space as it sits on the 2 fastest growing industries at this time with payments and crypto industries expected to pick up speed in the coming months. This is the reason why we are seeing a lot of interest in the company from various investors.
Considering this, the listing should also be heavily bought into, as and when it happens and it would be interesting to see valuations as more and more payment-related companies decide to go public. For the payments companies, it is indeed a great reward for having stuck it out over the last decade when the adoption among users and the interest among investors was very less.
