Circle to SPAC IPO, Raising $1 Billion

Circle is to go public through a merger with Concord Acquisition Corp, a publicly-traded SPAC with $284 million in trust.

A new Irish holding company will acquire both Concord and Circle and will trade on NYSE under the ticker of CRCL.

$415 million has been committed in private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing, bringing total capital to $1.1 billion when combined with cash in trust and Circle’s recently closed convertible note financing.

Current Circle shareholders will maintain approximately 86% ownership of the public entity with Jeremy Allaire (pictured) to remain CEO.

The deal is expected to close during the fourth quarter of this year with it valuing Circle at $4.5 billion.

Circle is the principal operator of USDc, a stablecoin that has seen massive growth, rising from $500 million in market cap last year to now $26 billion.

Circle claims USDc has handled $785 billion in blockchain transactions. That compares to Visa handling about $11 trillion a year with Circle so handling about 10% of Visa’s volumes.

Visa’s market cap is $500 billion, but Circle doesn’t directly charge per transaction with it to be seen what their revenue sources are once they file with the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC).

The fast growth of USDc is a bit surprising however with Coinbase being a partner. Their CEO, Brian Armstrong, recently met Fed’s chair Jerome Powell to presumably talk stablecoins.

There’s probably more room to grow with USDt, a competitor, being three times bigger. So this might be one of the most interesting IPO of the year due to their specialized focus on the tokenized dollar payment network.

Source: Read Full Article