Breaking News! USDC issuer Circle is about to IPO, aiming for a valuation of $5 billion!

Circle Internet Financial, the issuer of the world's second-largest stablecoin, USDC, is preparing for an IPO!

According to Fortune magazine, Circle plans to submit its IPO documents by the end of April, targeting a valuation between $4 billion and $5 billion. The underwriters for this IPO are JPMorgan and Citigroup, both of which were financial advisors when Coinbase went public.

This is not Circle's first attempt to go public. Back in 2021, the company tried to go public through a SPAC merger but was stalled due to regulatory issues and failed to obtain SEC approval.

Subsequently, the industry winter triggered by the FTX crisis forced Circle to completely abandon this plan by the end of 2022. Now making a comeback, Circle has chosen a more prudent traditional IPO path, and last year submitted confidential application documents to the SEC, currently moving towards public disclosure.

This IPO is garnering much attention not only because of its considerable scale but also because it will publicly disclose Circle's detailed financial status for the first time, and may even reveal their stock code to the public. If all goes well, Circle's IPO will be the largest in the cryptocurrency sector since Coinbase went public directly in 2021.

As the core asset supporting this IPO, the performance of the USDC stablecoin in recent years has been quite volatile. During the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March 2023, Circle had as much as $3.3 billion of funds trapped, leading to a brief de-pegging of USDC, with its market cap plummeting from over $50 billion at its peak to below $25 billion. However, unexpectedly, USDC has shown strong resilience, and through measures such as restructuring its cooperative model with Coinbase, its market cap has rebounded strongly to around $60 billion.

Although USDC's current market cap is still far from the $144 billion market cap of the largest stablecoin USDT, the recent positive attitude towards stablecoin legislation in the U.S. political arena, including public expectations that Trump may sign the stablecoin bill before August, has created a more favorable policy environment for Circle's compliant IPO.

If the IPO is successful, would you subscribe to Circle's stock? Do you think USDC can surpass USDT with this IPO?