Circle, a Goldman Sachs-backed fintech company focused on stablecoin development, has officially announced Thursday its plans to go public. Under the terms of the agreement, a new Irish holding company will acquire both Concord and Circle and become a publicly-traded company that is expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker “CRCL.” Upon completion of the transaction, existing Circle shareholders will hold around 86% ownership of the public entity. The company said it would go public through a merger with blank-check company Concord Acquisition Corp in a deal valued at $4.5 billion. Investors have …

USDC has grown much faster than Tether (USDT) in 2021 and it is emerging as the dominant stablecoin on Ethereum thanks to its popularity in DeFi according to Messari. Research by the analytics firm revealed that the demand for USD Coin has grown so much that it has consumed a large chunk of Tether’s market share this year. Researcher Ryan Watkins predicted that in the coming weeks, this could result in Tether' share of the stablecoin supply on Ethereum falling below 50%. He added that over half of the total USDC supply now sits in smart contracts, which is equivalent …

Digital asset exchange platform Crypto.com has opened a new U.S. dollar fiat on-ramp thanks to a new partnership with global payment provider Circle, according to a Monday announcement. The partnership between Crypto.com and Circle enables users in over 30 countries to deposit dollars from their bank account and receive USD Coin (USDC), a popular dollar-pegged stablecoin at a one-to-one ratio. Crypto.com’s trading platform has over 50 pairs with USDC, which means that user will be able to buy Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies with their stablecoins. Dollar withdrawals will be enabled in the near future, the announcement reads. …

Borderless Capital’s support for Algorand-based development has taken another incremental turn with the venture capital firm launching a new $25 million fund in Miami. In an announcement on Wednesday, the investment firm stated that the $25 million fund will focus on supporting blockchain startups in the city of Miami. Dubbed the Borderless.Miami Fund, the VC firm is joined by stablecoin issuer Circle to foster the growth of digital payment and digital capital market development in Miami. Apart from direct investments in blockchain startups, Borderless Capital is also seeking to launch the Algorand Miami Accelerator. Algorand accelerator programs in Europe and …

Crypto companies have been on the rise in tandem with the industry’s growth in recent years. A report from Forbes recently detailed a number of large investments into blockchain and digital asset entities, with one $440 million play rising to the forefront. “Circle, creator of the second-largest stablecoin, USDC, has just raised $440 million in private investment from an array of private equity, institutional and strategic investors,” Forbes wrote on Friday. Circle inked the deal on Friday, capturing investment from Fidelity Management and Research company, FTX, and others. The article recapped the details around the top-12 most sizable monetary contributions …

The co-founder and CEO of Circle, Jeremy Allaire, has made a bold prediction that the company-issued stablecoin is on track to surpass payments giant PayPal in terms of transacted dollar value. The comments came in a tweet on Tuesday, in which Allaire alluded to the on-chain transaction volume for USD Coin (USDC) over the past year, which he reported as over half a trillion dollars. He added that this was already about half of the total payment volume for PayPal in 2020, hinting that a “flippening” could be coming soon. In the last year, there has been over half a …

A U.S. federal court has granted authorization to the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, to serve a John Doe summons to fintech firm Circle seeking all information on U.S. taxpayers who traded at least $20,000 worth of crypto assets on its platforms between 2016 and 2020. The summons will apply to Circle Internet Financial Inc. including all “predecessors, subsidiaries, divisions, and affiliates, including Poloniex LLC.” According to the Department of Justice’s announcement, Judge Richard Stearns concluded there is “reasonable basis for believing that cryptocurrency users may have failed to comply with federal tax laws.” The document also notes the IRS …

Circle, the company behind the second most popular stablecoin USD Coin, has rolled out a new API that will allow for the seamless transfer of USDC to USD via automated clearinghouse (ACH) systems. The first exchange to adopt the new API will be derivatives and futures specialist FTX, looking to speed up USD settlement processes on behalf of their customers. In a blog entry, project manager Gee Chuang described how Circle’s ACH API improves connections between the fiat world and the digital world by introducing interoperability among payment rails, such as card, wire and blockchain transfers. Using the API, USD …

The cryptocurrency and blockchain industry grew by leaps and bounds in 2020. The top two assets, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), gained 303% and 469%, respectively, which can be considered extraordinary in comparison with the 25% return of gold. While the precious metal is often considered a safe-haven asset, the two digital assets outperformed gold during the uncertain market scenarios that persisted due to the pandemic. Joshua Frank, co-founder and CEO of The Tie — a firm providing crypto insights based on social media analytics — told Cointelegraph: “Across the largest 100 assets by market cap, the average cryptocurrency experienced …

Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of peer-to-peer payments firm Circle, sent a letter to senior staff of the United States Department of the Treasury on Dec. 9, appealing for regulators to collaborate with the industry in adopting crypto regulations. Allaire warned U.S. regulators that some of its proposed rules pose a direct risk to the country’s competitiveness and could potentially trigger unintended consequences around crypto and blockchain-related use cases. The exec specifically referred to a new proposal to prohibit so-called unhosted or self-hosted wallets. Allaire argued that the proposal does not address actual risks in the industry: “I believe the …

Speaking at Singapore Fintech Festival, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said that "third-generation blockchain technology" would see digital currency "in the hands of hundreds of millions, if not billions of users." Allaire featured on a panel alongside the CEO of Facebook’s 'Diem' Association (formerly Libra Association) Stuart Levey, Coinbase CPO Surojit Chatterjee, and Soramitsu CEO Makoto Takemiya, to discuss the question: Can Digital Currencies Birth the Next Generation of World-Class Payment Systems?. Allaire argued that digital currencies are still very early in their development but are about to take a leap analogous to that from dial-up internet to broadband. “We’re right …

One of the leaders in U.S. crypto is optimistic that the space will grow under the administration of Joe Biden governing from the middle. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, took to CNBC's Squawk Box on Monday to argue that the Biden administration will push crypto forward as part of a broad effort to update infrastructure: "I think that they will ultimately be supportive because this is an infrastructure change as big as the initial commercial internet, and they're going to be focused on infrastructure changes that make America more competitive." Overall, moderate politics benefit crypto, Allaire reasoned: "You've got moderates, …