Circle, the first stablecoin stock: Which Chinese investment institutions benefited from it?

On June 5, 2025, Circle, the first stablecoin/second cryptocurrency, officially landed on the U.S. stock market with an issue price of $31. As of June 20, 2025, the stock price has risen to $240.28 per share, an increase of 675%, and the market value has risen to $53.5 billion.

Circle is a purely American company founded by Americans in the United States and listed in the United States. According to general development practices, there is basically no chance of intersection with Chinese VCs. However, for various reasons, some Chinese VC institutions participated in its financing and made a lot of money in this IPO feast.

Circle is a stablecoin issuer focusing on the US dollar stablecoin USDC. Its business model is simple and profitable: the company issues USDC stablecoins anchored 1:1 with the US dollar, and invests the funds deposited by users mainly in short-term US Treasury bonds, thereby earning almost risk-free returns.

One ​​of the founders is Jeremy Allaire, 53 years old, who studied political science, philosophy and economics in college. He is a believer in Internet minimalism and a serial entrepreneur. He founded two listed companies in 1995 and 2012, namely software company Allaire and online video platform Brightcove. In 2013, he founded Circle with Adobe Chief Scientist Sean Neville, proposed the vision of "letting value flow as freely as information" and advocated the use of blockchain technology to reshape financial infrastructure.

Circle's main business was not stablecoin in the beginning, and its development process has experienced many twists and turns and changes, which can be summarized as follows:

2013-2017: Payment exploration and early financing

October 2013:

• Allaire and Neville founded Circle in Boston, USA, initially focusing on blockchain cross-border payments and launching Circle Pay (known as the "American Alipay")

2015–2016:

• Cumulative financing exceeded US$130 million, and investors included Goldman Sachs, IDG Capital, Baidu, etc. The business focus is consumer payment, but market acceptance is limited

2018: Strategic transformation and the birth of USDC

Key financing:

• Huaxing New Economy Fund(led by Lei Ming), Bitmain, IDG and other institutional investors

Business milestones:

Strategic Adjustment:

• Closed consumer payment business and invested in stablecoin

2021-2022: IPO attempts and crises

July 2021:

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• Announced a SPAC merger and listing, with a valuation of US$4.5 billion, which was later increased to US$9 billion (February 2022)

December 2022:

• SPAC listing was terminated due to SEC's failure to approve the prospectus, with a loss of US$44 million

March 2023:

• Silicon Valley Bank crisis: $3.3 billion in reserves were frozen, and USDC was decoupled. After the crisis, the core strategy of "license + listing + transparency" was established

2023-2024: Restructuring and expansion

2023:

• Acquired Centre shares held by Coinbase and became the only issuer of USDC

• Headquarters moved to the World Trade Center in New York to strengthen the image of financial compliance

2024:

• Financial performance: Revenue of US$1.68 billion (99% from stablecoins), net profit of US$160 million, but 54% of the revenue was distributed to Coinbase

• Market share: USDC circulation volume reached US$60.1 billion, accounting for 29% of the stablecoin market

2025: Acquisition, IPO and listing

January 2025:

• Acquired RWA issuer Hashnote (which manages $1.3 billion in tokenized treasury bonds) for US$99.8 million to strengthen its asset tokenization layout

April-June 2025:

• April: Submitted IPO application to the New York Stock Exchange, code CRCL

• May: Increased IPO scale: issue price increased from US$24-26 to US$27-28, fundraising increased from US$600 million to US$880 million; received ARK Invest (Wood Sister) $150 million anchor subscription

• June: Official listing: issue price of $31, raising $1.1 billion, up 168% on the first day, market value of $18.36 billion; two days later, market value reached $24 billion

Significance: Becoming the world's first IPO of a stablecoin issuer.

According to the venture capital database and public media information, the domestic institutions participating in Circle include:

IDG (D-E rounds, some media say C-D rounds, but according to the investment time shown in the venture capital database and the definition of rounds in the IPO documents, it should be D-E rounds), Distributed Capital (Wanxiang, D round), Bitmain (E round), Baidu (D round), Everbright Holdings (D round), CreditEase (D round), CICC (D round), Huaxing New Economy (E round).

Among these institutions, the most important is IDG, which is also the only one among these institutions that appears in Circle's IPO documents and is clearly confirmed as an important shareholder with a shareholding ratio of 12.8%. IDG's Li Tong once served as CEO of Circle's China business and director of its Chinese entity, Tianjin Shike Technology. IDG partner Zhou Quan was also a former director of the company.

In addition, Distributed Capital can also be confirmed, because its founder Xiao Feng appeared on the board of directors of Tianjin Shike Technology Co., Ltd., which was once the operating entity of Circle in China; and Everbright Holdings was also confirmed. It was mentioned in the announcement of its listed company, but it did not say whether it was a direct or indirect investment. In 2016, Everbright Holdings cooperated with IDG to establish a 10.1 billion fund - iQiyi Equity Investment Fund (Shanghai) Partnership (Limited Partnership); the last one to be confirmed was Huaxing New Economy Fund, whose leading investor Lei Ming (now a partner of Zhuichuang Venture Capital under Zhuimi) shared his investment in Circle in a recent interview.

According to Circle's IPO documents, the investment prices of investors in different rounds and the corresponding company valuations are as follows:

The investment return multiple for investors in Round D is 87x based on the current stock price, and the investment return multiple for investors in Round E is 14.8x.

Before the IPO, IDG held 23,275,040 shares, which were held by two entities, Chuang Xi Capital Limited and Wide Palace Limited, as follows:

Among them: IDG-Accel China Capital GP II Associates Ltd is a fund jointly established by IDG and Accel. Accel is IDG’s cooperative institution in the United States. According to public information, the scale of the fund is US$750 million, and it holds 8,598,710 shares of Circle; as for the fund IDG China Capital Fund GP III Associates Ltd, the corresponding entity holds. 14,676,330 Circle shares, but it is not clear which fund it corresponds to, and whether it is related to the fund mentioned above and Everbright Holdings established in 2016 - iQiyi Holdings Equity Investment Fund (Shanghai) Partnership (Limited Partnership).

Accel is an angel investor of Circle, and its partner Jim Breyeris also an investment partner of IDG in the United States, which foreshadowed Circle's attempt to expand its business in China in 2016 and IDG's investment.

IDG chose to sell 2,327,504 shares at the time of IPO, which is worth $72.15 million based on the issue price of $31 per share. It is speculated that this value is equivalent to the investment cost. The current value of the remaining shares is $5.033 billion. These values ​​correspond to the scale of the two funds invested, which can definitely achieve Homerun. For the $750 million fund in cooperation with Accel, it can directly contribute more than 2x DPI.

So what is the current value of the shares held by other domestic investors in rounds D-E? Assuming that they did not sell old shares later and did not choose to sell shares at the IPO:

A total of 60.594 million shares were issued in rounds D-E, of which IDG held 23.27504 million shares and other investment institutions held a total of 37.31896 million shares. If domestic institutions hold 50% of these shares, corresponding to 18.65948 million shares, the corresponding value of the latest share price is US$3.8 billion.