Behind the Listing of Circle, the World's Second Largest Stablecoin Giant: The Founder's 7-Year Journey with Stablecoins

Circle, the world's second-largest stablecoin giant, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and opened trading, which is the second largest native U.S.-listed company in the cryptocurrency industry after the listing of an exchange in 2021. Four years ago, the listing of a trading platform witnessed the peak moment of Bitcoin, and four years later, after a bull and bear cycle of cryptocurrency, the listing of Circle allowed the industry to see a new narrative of cryptocurrency - stablecoins.

In simple terms, a stablecoin is the tokenization of the US dollar, while being value-pegged to the dollar, 1 token = 1 US dollar.

Stablecoins and the RWA (real-world asset-on-chain) concept behind them have been significantly different from previous years since the beginning of this year. The favorable stablecoin policy of the United States and the stablecoin policy of Hong Kong, China, coupled with Wall Street's attention to RWA projects, and the current situation of many traditional financial institutions entering stablecoins, have made the concept of RWA and stablecoins quickly out of the circle. Circle, which was not optimistic at first, has climbed its valuation from $5.4 billion to about $7 billion now, thanks to the scramble of many investment institutions to buy IPO shares.

The Bitcoin white paper defines Bitcoin as "a peer-to-peer electronic cash system." However, Bitcoin has now become a financial commodity, and hardly anyone uses it for payments. The only thing that can truly be used as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system is now stablecoins, which is where the real potential of stablecoins lies.

And Jeremy Allaire, the founder of Circle, foresaw all of this seven years ago.

! Circle Founder: 7 years ago, how I got all in stablecoin

The "Shovel Seller" in the Web 1.0 Era

"I started working with the Internet in 1990, and what really struck me was experiencing first-hand the power of open networks, distributed systems, decentralized architectures, open protocols, and open source software, which I often refer to as the 'DNA of the Internet.'"

"During that time, I was also following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I was deeply shocked by this structural change, and at the same time I began to delve deeper into technology, and I became more and more convinced that the Internet would change the world."

By 1994, the first graphical web browser technology was born. Jeremy suddenly realized that we finally had a piece of software that could showcase content and applications on the web, which gave rise to the concept of "Web as an application platform."

So, Jeremy and his brother, along with some partners, co-founded Allaire Corporation and launched ColdFusion, the first commercial web programming language.

"At the time, there was Perl and there were people writing dynamic page logic in C on a web server, but ColdFusion really made web application development easy to use—if you had an idea and about a thousand dollars, you could make a web application that would work interactively in the browser."

In 1995, this was already a big breakthrough. With the rise of websites, e-commerce, and online content, Allaire has jumped on the bandwagon and developed a suite of tools that are used by millions of developers around the world.

As the market matured, Allaire successfully went public in early 1999. At that time, it was somewhat "alternative" because they were profitable at the time of their IPO - during the internet bubble, most companies were in a loss-making state when they went public. But they were more like the "shovel sellers" of the internet 1.0 era, providing foundational tools for the entire industry.

After going public, Allaire merged with Macromedia, which was also a giant in developing internet and content creation tools at the time. Jeremy became the CTO of the new company after the merger and began promoting the application development of Flash, enabling web pages to achieve more complex multimedia presentations and interactive experiences.

The "political economist on the couch" fell down the crypto rabbit hole

Jeremy first encountered the internet because he was studying international political economy, focusing on the comparison of various economic systems and political institutions, and he was very interested in macro issues related to the international economic system. The transformation of information transmission and software distribution methods brought by the open network of the internet thrilled him.

During the Macromedia era, as early as March 2002, they added the ability to play videos seamlessly in Flash Player, making video playback ubiquitous on the Internet. For the first time, anyone can easily embed a video into a browser. YouTube, which later exploded, was built on this technology.

Later, Jeremy founded Brightcove, which is still based on the underlying DNA of the Internet: open networks, open protocols, and distributed systems.

"My thought at the time was - could any company or media organization publish video and television content directly on the internet? You have to understand, it was 2004, when broadband was just starting, Wi-Fi was just emerging, and there were no smartphones yet, but people were already talking about the future of 'connected devices'."

"One thing is very clear, I can see that there will be a large number of networked devices in the future, including Wi-Fi and mobile broadband, and video transmission will be completely liberated."

So they built an online video distribution system - which can be understood as "online television platform". This is an extension of the capabilities of the Internet: finally realizing what people imagined in the Web 1.0 era during the Web 2.0 era. Brightcove's business was quite successful and ultimately went public successfully in early 2012.

Why was Circle founded ###?

When the financial crisis of 2008 sparked Jeremy's early academic thinking, he became a "political economist on the couch", reading frantically about the nature of money, central banks, the international monetary system, and the fractional reserve system. He pondered, "What's going on?" and "Is there a better monetary system?" Is there a better way to structure the international financial system? "

In 2012, shortly after Brightcove went public, Jeremy came into contact with cryptocurrency and plunged headfirst into this rabbit hole.

"I'm a technology and product person myself, and when I got into this field from a technical perspective, I saw something shocking: it was a real technological breakthrough. Some computer science puzzles have been solved, and these solutions are extremely powerful. For the first time, I synced the Bitcoin blockchain on my laptop and used it to complete a peer-to-peer transaction – directly on the internet, relying entirely on open protocols. It was like opening a web page for me for the first time – I thought to myself, 'Oh my God, this is the really missing internet infrastructure!'" '"

Next, Jeremy and his co-founders went deeper and deeper, especially in the tech community at the time, where they were involved in discussions about issuing other types of digital assets on blockchain networks. Jeremy, who has worked on virtual machines and programming languages, naturally thinks about how to make these digital assets "programmable", how to implement "programmable money", and how to build smart contracts.

"At that time, these were just ideas on napkins, and some white papers had just emerged, but we were very clear that all of these would be realized; it was just a matter of time."

Combine these ideas with another question: how to build a more secure and open financial system? These thoughts converged, becoming the only thing Jeremy could think about, which almost drove him to obsession, ultimately leading him to decide to found Circle.

"Our original intention is whether we can create a protocol similar to HTTP for 'money'? Can we build an open internet protocol suitable for the US dollar? This protocol is open, programmable, and so on."

"This was what we envisioned ten years ago, and now it's a reality and has become a real 'killer app' in the crypto space. Although it took a long time to build this system, it is now quite large, although it is still in its early stages. "

! Circle Founder: 7 years ago, how I got all in stablecoin

The Rise of USDC

In the spring of 2018, the crypto market experienced a sharp pullback, followed by a severe winter for the entire industry, with almost the entire market falling sharply. Circle's products that would have brought in revenue and profit at the time either barely broke even or began to lose money, and the company began to burn money at a breakneck pace.

In 2019, the deepest part of that winter, financing became extremely difficult. At the same time, Circle's operating costs are out of control and cash is running out — and if it doesn't act, it faces bankruptcy.

It was also at this time that they officially launched USDC in October 2018.

a gamble

In 2019, DeFi protocols began to widely adopt USDC, and the market also saw early product-market fit. Although the market was still highly volatile at that time, from a technical perspective, Ethereum had matured enough to truly support these applications, allowing developers to finally start using these tools.

Although the trading volume was still small at the time, the acceptance of USDC by the developer community was very high. Circle saw this and realized that this was the original vision of the company, this was the core of who they were, and this was what they really wanted to do.

So, in a very short period of time, they quickly sold three businesses — an exchange, an over-the-counter business, and an investment product for retail investors — while also shutting down and liquidating the payment app they had once launched.

Through the sale of these assets, the company obtained the funds needed urgently and completely restructured internally. Some employees were transferred to these spun-off businesses, and the company as a whole underwent drastic adjustments.

By the fall of 2019, Circle was once again on the brink of bankruptcy, but at this time USDC began to show early signs of vitality in the market. Therefore, the company made a decision - to fully bet on USDC, putting all its energy into it, building a complete platform around it, and promoting its widespread adoption.

"This is the equivalent of a 'high roller' decision, at that time USDC itself has not brought in any revenue, and even the entire company has basically no revenue. But I was very convinced that the era of stablecoins had arrived, that they would eventually become a core component of the global monetary system, and that stablecoins would be the most suitable monetary architecture for the Internet age. "

"At that time, we had the right product, and as long as we persisted, we would definitely find the right path and create something valuable. So we gave it our all to push it forward."

This is the first truly significant challenge in the development of USDC. Although there have been many difficulties before, this moment is a critical moment for the survival of the entire company. While USDC already had early momentum at the time, it wasn't enough to support a scaled company.

Circle has shifted all of its resources to USDC, putting all its funds on this. "I remember very clearly that we officially announced this strategy in January 2020, when the Circle website's homepage underwent a complete redesign, turning into a huge billboard promoting 'stablecoin is the future of the international financial system'. The only action button on the page was: 'Get USDC'. Just this one item, all other functions were removed."

Then, on March 10, 2020, Circle released a platform upgrade, comprehensively upgraded the USDC account system, and launched a set of new APIs to facilitate developers to seamlessly connect banks, bank cards and other payment systems to realize USDC deposit and withdrawal operations, and the entire platform is built around USDC.

Just three days later, on March 13, the world went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, USDC had already begun to grow in February 2020, before Circle's official release, which could be because users in the Asian market had already realized the severity of the pandemic and started to react in advance.

During that period, a very complex phenomenon occurred: many people, due to a lack of trust in their country's financial system, began transferring funds into digital dollars; at the same time, governments around the world also successively introduced large-scale emergency stimulus policies in an attempt to inject liquidity into the market to prevent the economy from falling into a "Great Depression."

There has been a highly coordinated ultra-loose policy across the globe, which has led to an influx of money into the market. People sit at home with government-issued subsidy checks and start thinking, "What am I going to do with this money?" "

During that period, the world experienced a sudden acceleration of the digitalization process. The concept of the metaverse began to gain popularity, and people became "online" overnight. All digital products experienced explosive growth, from video conferencing software to home fitness products, to e-commerce, digital payments, and online markets—almost every digital industry saw a growth acceleration equivalent to five years during that phase.

At the same time, the adoption of blockchain technology and the digital asset market have also entered an explosive stage. The summer of 2020 was known as the "DeFi Summer", and USDC also soared from $400 million in circulation at the beginning of 2020 to $40 billion in a year, experiencing drastic and explosive growth.

Prerequisites for the popularity of stablecoins

Over the years, people have often asked, "How can this thing be truly popularized on a large scale?" Jeremy's answer is that there are three key issues that need to be addressed. The "we" here is not just Circle, but the entire industry, which needs to work together to promote.

The first issue is the infrastructure, which is the blockchain network itself.

"My model for thinking about blockchain networks is that they are like 'operating systems for the internet'. What we need is an OS-based blockchain network with higher performance and higher throughput. Much progress has been made in this area over the past few years. We have now entered the era of the 'third generation blockchain network' - that is, the high-performance Layer 1 public chain, and the Layer 2 extended network. "

This means that higher transaction throughput can be achieved, and the cost of a single transaction is extremely low, which can be less than a penny or even less than a penny. The progress of these high-performance networks is also driving the growth of the entire ecosystem. Because you reduce the unit cost, the marginal cost, and at the same time increase the transaction speed - this is like the transition from the dial-up Internet era to the broadband Internet, from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0.

The second question is the network effect. Stablecoins like USDC are actually a type of network product platform that developers build applications on. The more applications connected, the stronger the overall network's usability. The more users holding stablecoins, the greater the network's utility, thus creating a positive feedback loop.

Then there is the third issue, which is also known as "availability" improvements, which are also closely related to infrastructure upgrades. I still remember two or three years ago, if you want to use stablecoins, you have to go to a certain platform to buy it first, and then install a browser plug-in wallet, in order to use the wallet, you have to buy Ethereum first, pay expensive handling fees, and then transfer ETH to your own self-custody wallet, the whole process is not to mention seven or eight minutes, and it is particularly troublesome, and the whole process can be said to be completely unreasonable.

"At that time, if someone said 'who would want to use this thing?' it was completely understandable. But now you can directly access the wallet system through a web interface or mobile app, and the entire experience is just like registering for instant messaging software, possibly only requiring a phone number, facial recognition, or biometric code, without needing to remember a mnemonic phrase or deal with a bunch of complicated settings."

All these changes combined are creating a favorable environment for the acceptance and use of stablecoins.

The last ultimate hurdle is government regulation.

"The most exciting thing is that now, globally, from Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, to all of Europe, the UK, the UAE, and then to the United States, almost all major jurisdictions are successively introducing relevant laws that clearly define stablecoins as legal electronic currency and include them in the formal financial system."

"Once these laws are in place, the use of stablecoins will expand beyond the early crypto natives to a broader general population. So we believe that by the end of 2025, stablecoins are likely to be part of a broad legal consolidation in the global financial system. "

Of course, all of this is still in a very early stage. The current state can be viewed through the "Crossing the Chasm" theory: it's like leaping over that "chasm" in the air, not having truly landed yet, and there is still a possibility of failure and falling. But Jeremy believes that the industry will jump over it.

"We can see more and more 'FinTech-friendly banks', or 'emerging digital banks', beginning to natively support the use of stablecoins. For example, NuBank in Latin America, Revolut in Europe, or brokerage applications like Robinhood."

"Of course, this also includes those large cryptocurrency companies, which to some extent have actually become 'financial super apps': you can store your balance, receive your salary, bind cards for spending, and the process of obtaining and using USDC has also become very smooth."

Jeremy observes a trend where people are starting to think of the "dollar" as a store of value, but its underlying form is actually USDC.

There are already partnerships with payment giants that allow card issuers to issue a type of card that is ostensibly a traditional payment card, but is actually spent using a stablecoin, such as USDC.

This model is already emerging in emerging markets, where users get a physical or virtual card tied to their stablecoin balance through a neobank-style digital wallet app. Because a lot of people want to hold US dollars, and these cards allow them to continue spending in the traditional card network, but the way of back-end clearing has become USDC.

Even for these card issuers, the cleared funds they pay to the payment network can now be done directly through USDC. USDC has actually been used as a clearing channel between financial institutions and card networks.

At the same time, merchant acquirers are also starting to join in, with several payment processing companies providing options for merchants to settle in USDC.

"At the beginning of this year, we saw a very cool example: a co-founder of a payment company said at their annual conference when launching a new product: 'Crypto is back, but this time it's not Bitcoin, it's USDC, a stablecoin.'"

He demonstrated a new feature in their payment product on the spot - allowing merchants to directly embed the payment gateway into their own website or app. During the demonstration, USDC was displayed alongside credit cards as a payment option, and merchants could choose to accept USDC.

With the gradual clarification of the legal status of stablecoins, more and more financial institutions will regard them as the basic liquidation layer. The merchant may say, "I'm willing to charge USDC because I can get the money right away and I can save on fees, which is a better option for me." "

On the user side, there are also an increasing number of types of terminal products emerging—whether traditional banks, emerging digital banks, or crypto super apps, they are all creating a seamless experience that allows users to complete payments just by scanning a QR code.

"Another big thing I mentioned on social media earlier this year is that iOS has started to open up NFC to third-party wallets. This means that Web3 wallets may support 'mobile phone' payment in the future, and users can directly use the wallet with USDC in their mobile phones to complete the payment at the physical merchant terminal. "

Of course, achieving this requires the cooperation of multiple parties, such as payment processors and acquirers to support on-chain transactions, and wallet developers to integrate NFC functions into their products, which also need to be approved by Apple. However, these are already being planned, and it is expected that a larger scale will be seen in 2025.

The favorable policy environment continues to improve

Circle's idea from day one is to stand at the intersection between the traditional financial system and the new world of blockchain, and to do so, the U.S. government has made its legal position clear as early as March 2013:

If you are a company that connects both the banking system and the world of virtual currency, you are an "electronic money transmitter", you must be federally registered, you must have a complete anti-money laundering procedure, and you must apply for a license in every state that has the relevant legal requirements.

"We are the first company in the cryptocurrency industry to obtain a full set of compliance licenses from the ground up. We are the first cryptocurrency company to obtain an electronic money institution license in Europe, and we are also the first company in New York to receive the so-called 'BitLicense'—the first regulatory license specifically established for the cryptocurrency industry. Nearly a year later, we are the only ones holding this license."

Circle has always adhered to the concept of "regulation first" and chose to take the "front door" route to ensure a good and robust compliance system. It is precisely because of this compliance foundation that they can achieve another key objective: liquidity.

Jeremy explains: "What is liquidity? That is, you can actually create and redeem stablecoins, you can connect to real bank accounts, and buy and redeem stablecoins with fiat currency. If you're a suspicious offshore company and no one wants to open a bank account for you, you simply can't do that. You don't even know where your bank is. "

"We are the first company to establish high-quality banking partnerships and have also introduced strategic partners to distribute USDC on a large scale at the retail end, allowing any ordinary user with a bank account to easily buy and redeem USDC. We also provide institutional-level services. This means that we have achieved transparency, compliance, regulatory frameworks, and actual liquidity."

In terms of technological innovation, Circle has also been exploring what more the protocol itself can do. They view USDC as a stablecoin network protocol and have been thinking about how to collaborate with developers to promote its integration and application. These fundamental principles are the root reason why they have come this far.

In terms of payment stablecoins, various parties in the United States have done a lot of work, and the "Payment Stablecoin Act" is quite mature, with bipartisan support in the House of Representatives and active involvement from the Senate leadership. This issue has been prioritized by the government for several years.

The U.S. Senate passed a procedural vote on the U.S. Stablecoin Innovation Guidance and Establishment Act of 2025 on May 19 in an attempt to provide federal regulation for dollar-pegged stablecoins.

The financial system itself is a highly regulated industry, the energy system is highly regulated, the transportation system is highly regulated, the aerospace system is highly regulated, and pharmaceutical production is also highly regulated. Most critical technologies or infrastructures in society are under intensive regulation.

"The software industry has probably been an exception for the last 30 years, it has had very little regulation. But right now, if you're doing something really big, very cutting-edge, like artificial intelligence, hardware combined with autonomous driving, or you're building a global digital currency system — these areas are starting to intersect with those traditional, highly regulated industries, and they have a huge potential impact on society, it makes sense to be regulated. "

"I don't think 'innovation shouldn't be regulated.'" If something becomes extremely important to society as a whole, then it needs to match the spirit of contract and the framework of social responsibility, which is a real system. Regulation can be both light and heavy – global systemically important banks, for example, are far more regulated than a local community bank. "

What Circle is truly focusing on now is how to realize the concept of an internet financial system, and how to make "open, programmable, and composable money" a reality. They hope that this innovation can truly take root, rather than being stifled. To achieve this, it also requires policymakers and governments to provide more freedom for innovation.

! Circle Founder: 7 years ago, how I got all in stablecoins

Circle's Business Model

"I believe Circle is one of the most transparent financial institutions in history. If you