Crypto's Hottest New Stock

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Welcome back to GRIT Alpha! This week’s analysis comes from the stock that just had one of the most successful IPOs over the last few years… And it’s a crypto company!

Dive in with us below!

Stock Pick: Circle Internet Group Inc. (CRCL-US, $23B MCAP)

Whoever said the IPO window would be closed this year just got humbled.

We’ve seen a bunch of new issues come to market that had incredible strength out of the gate - Coreweave, Hinge Health, and now the new sheriff in town… Circle.

Circle is riding many waves right now - mass adoption in crypto, deregulation, and having a product that benefits from the digitalization of finance. But this is not a traditional exchange like we’ve seen with Coinbase. In the land of crypto - there are plenty of groundbreaking innovations all in different pockets of the market.

This company plays in a space called stablecoins.

So without further ado, lets dig into this hot IPO, the business model, and see whether the runaway debut is justified.

• Why now? 👉 Riding the Stablecoin Wave in 2025

• Overview 👉 What Does Circle Do?

• Lay of the Land 👉 Stablecoins and Payments Infrastructure

• Product Suite 👉 Stablecoin APIs, Treasury Services, and Web3 Tools

• How Do They Make Money? 👉 Circle’s Business Model and Unit Economics

• By The Numbers 👉 Key Metrics

• Risks 👉 Potential Pitfalls

Why now? 👉 Riding the Stablecoin Wave in 2025

Circle Internet Group’s June 2025 IPO hit a perfect window: stablecoins were crossing from crypto niche to mainstream finance just as U.S. lawmakers prepared a federal stablecoin bill and President Trump signaled strong industry support. After a bruising 2022-24 “crypto winter,” sentiment flipped; Bitcoin topped $100k, new ETFs spurred inflows, and risk appetite returned, as shown by eToro’s 34% Nasdaq pop. Circle, issuer of USDC, capitalized on this tailwind, pricing at $31 to raise $1.05 billion and valuing itself near $6.9 billion. Shares opened at $69, closed day-one at $83.23 (+168%), and quickly topped $111, rocketing the market cap past $20 billion—the biggest first-day gain for a >$1 billion IPO in decades.

The frenzy validated Circle’s choice of a traditional IPO over its scrapped 2022 SPAC and underscored investor hunger for a pure-play stablecoin bet. Analysts now see the deal as crypto’s bellwether, potentially clearing a path for firms like Kraken or Gemini. Meanwhile, corporates from fintechs to Uber are piloting USDC for faster, cheaper cross-border payments, reinforcing the view that stablecoins are evolving into mainstream financial rails. Circle’s debut both reflects—and accelerates—the stablecoin revolution.

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Overview 👉 What Does Circle Do?

Circle Internet Group is the principal issuer of USD Coin (USDC), a U.S.-dollar-pegged stablecoin kept 1:1 with cash and short-term Treasuries. Designed as digital cash, each USDC is redeemable for $1, letting traders shuttle dollars across exchanges instantly and enabling businesses to send 24/7 cross-border payments that settle in minutes. Founded in 2013, Circle now focuses squarely on stablecoins, positioning itself as “internet-native” financial plumbing rather than a traditional bank. It governs the USDC network, maintains full collateralization with monthly—and, since 2025, daily—attestations by Deloitte, and publishes transparent reserve reports.

That compliance-first approach has made USDC the world’s No. 2 stablecoin with roughly a 25-30% share in mid-2025, trailing only Tether’s USDT. Circulation has rebounded to about $44-45 billion, nearly doubling year-over-year as crypto markets recovered. Thanks to integrations with Ethereum, Solana, and other major blockchains, USDC routinely facilitates more than $100 billion in daily on-chain volume, serving as dollar liquidity for DeFi protocols, exchanges, and wallets. Circle also issues Euro Coin (EURC) and provides a suite of APIs and “Circle Accounts” that let enterprises convert fiat to USDC, accept digital-currency payments, and outsource crypto custody.

In effect, Circle straddles multiple roles: regulated payments company, crypto network operator, and developer platform. This hybrid model—and its status as the first publicly traded stablecoin issuer—sets Circle apart in both fintech and blockchain landscapes.

Lay of the Land 👉 Stablecoins and Payments Infrastructure

Circle’s toughest competition comes first from other dollar-pegged stablecoins. Tether (USDT) still commands roughly 60% of the market with an $80 billion float, riding deep global liquidity and a long head start. Yet its opaque reserves and sporadic audits create a regulatory gap that Circle fills with daily attestations by Deloitte and full cash-and-T-bill backing. Regulated rival Paxos issues USDP and powers PayPal USD, but adoption lags far behind USDC and USDT, while decentralized contenders such as MakerDAO’s DAI remain niche and ironically rely in part on USDC collateral. Should Congress finalize a law requiring full-reserve transparency, Circle’s audit-heavy model would gain further advantage.

Beyond crypto, Circle’s vision of instant global payments puts it up against entrenched cross-border processors like Western Union, MoneyGram, and Wise, whose correspondent-bank rails are slower and pricier. Circle can move value in USDC within minutes at near-zero fees. Interestingly, credit-card giants Visa and Mastercard have chosen partnership over rivalry, piloting USDC settlement flows that effectively place Circle’s rails inside their networks. Attempts by big tech or banks to mint their own coins (for example Facebook’s defunct Diem) have fizzled, yet a future U.S. or EU central-bank digital currency remains a looming existential threat.

On the infrastructure side, custody-API specialists such as Fireblocks, BitGo, and Anchorage overlap with Circle’s Programmable Wallets, but none issues the underlying currency, leaving Circle vertically integrated from coin creation to developer tooling. In cross-chain liquidity, its native Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, which burns USDC on a source chain and re-mints it on a destination chain, competes with bridges like Wormhole and LayerZero by promising lower counterparty risk.

Circle therefore fights a two-front war: winning liquidity from rival stablecoins while attracting enterprises away from legacy payment rails and crypto-infra providers. Its moat hinges on three levers—regulatory first-mover status, a partnership flywheel that turns would-be competitors into collaborators, and the network effects of USDC’s broad blockchain support. Sustaining momentum will require expanding share despite Tether’s dominance and staying ahead of potential disruptors such as CBDCs or a heavyweight tech entrant.

Product Suite 👉 Stablecoin APIs, Treasury Services, and Web3 Tools

Circle has expanded far beyond simply minting USDC. Through Circle Mint, exchanges and fintechs can create or redeem USDC in bulk—typically free, but swaps above $15 million carry a 0.03% fee—keeping the peg tight and generating high-volume revenue. Circle Accounts and related payment, payout, and foreign-exchange APIs turn the company into a crypto-native treasury bank: merchants can accept cards, wires, or ACH and receive instant USDC, then disburse salaries or vendor payments globally in either digital dollars or local fiat. The forthcoming Circle Payments Network aims to let banks settle cross-border obligations in USDC, bypassing slow correspondent rails.

For corporates that hold large USDC balances, Circle offers treasury tools: it partners with BlackRock on the Circle Reserve Fund so clients can sweep idle USDC into short-term Treasuries and earn yield—or even hold tokenized fund shares (nicknamed “USYC”), blurring the line between stablecoins and traditional cash management. To spur developer adoption, Circle provides Programmable Wallets (custody-as-a-service), Gas Station (sponsoring user gas fees), and a Smart Contract Platform, all offered freemium today but positioned for usage-based pricing as apps scale. Its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) burns USDC on one chain and mints it on another, eliminating wrapped-token risk and setting up a future per-transfer fee stream.

Taken together—core coins (USDC, EURC), enterprise banking rails, yield solutions, developer wallets, and native cross-chain liquidity—Circle’s ecosystem deepens customer lock-in and creates multiple revenue levers that extend well beyond the sheer volume of USDC in circulation, even though interest on reserve assets still dominates near-term earnings.

How Do They Make Money? 👉 Circle’s Business Model and Unit Economics

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