Why is Circle’s listing another landmark event in the crypto industry?

‍Last Thursday night, Circle, the issuer of the world's second largest stablecoin USDC (about 25% market share), was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The issue price was $31 per share. Circle triggered circuit breakers several times during the trading session. On the first day of listing, it closed with a 168.48% increase at $83.23. At the close of the day, the market value exceeded $18.5 billion, and continued to rise by nearly 30% the next day.

Currently, the total market value of global stablecoins has exceeded $250 billion, of which USDT and USDC together account for 86% of the market share. This is why Circle repeatedly adjusted its opening price on the eve of its IPO, because the market is much hotter than expected.

Because of Circle's listing on the New York Stock Exchange, the concept of "stablecoin" has occupied the financial headlines for several days. To some extent, it has also made more traditional financial people re-recognize the value of stablecoins.

In addition, almost on the same day, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region officially issued a document to clarify that August 1, 2025 is the implementation date of the "Stablecoin Ordinance", which further boosted the popularity of stablecoins in the financial market. Similarly, the GENIUS Stablecoin Act of the United States is also on the way. It seems that everything is just right.

Here we will not talk too much about the value of stablecoins. After experiencing explosive growth in recent years, if we still deny the significance of its existence, it is probably the same as saying that "BTC is useless" now. We need to rethink and adjust our cognition.

Back to the same period 4 years ago, that is, in the last bull market cycle, Coinbase, the largest Crypto exchange in the United States, successfully landed on the Nasdaq. On the first day of listing, the stock price once soared to US$429, with a market value of more than US$112 billion, bringing hundreds of times returns to many early investment institutions.

But then it ushered in a more than 2-year adjustment period. Its performance in the months after listing was also criticized, and it was even called a "junk company". However, it was precisely because of the successful listing of Coinbase that the traditional financial market saw another emerging financial market that was rising, and the current BTC ETF and various reserve assets were also created.

Similarly, for Circle's listing, its significance lies in that it allows the stablecoin, which was originally only recognized by a certain group of people, to truly enter the "mainstream" and also gain the favor of some old money. After all, if it only stays in the vision of a small number of people, it is difficult to enter the mainstream world, especially through listing to demonstrate its financial capabilities and corporate transparency, which is crucial to the development of stablecoins.

As Circle co-founder Jeremy Allaire said in an interview with Bloomberg: "The IPO will bring more trust, compliance and transparency to Circle's regulated stablecoin network and help it establish partnerships with other financial institutions."

In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto proposed the form of "trustless currency" and created BTC. The ideal at the time was to use a new form of currency like BTC to fight against financial institutions that abused currency, but now BTC can no longer be used as an effective means of payment due to various restrictions. This is why stablecoins can develop rapidly.

In a sense, stablecoins have replaced part of Satoshi Nakamoto's ideals, of course only in "form". After all, stablecoins have returned to institutional logic and have only borrowed their technical form. However, based on this point, we cannot deny their value.

a16z Crypto pointed out in its latest report that in the past 12 months, the transaction volume of stablecoins has reached 33 trillion US dollars, continuing to set a new record, close to 20 times the transaction volume of PayPal and close to 3 times the transaction volume of Visa.

Some people may think that the current market size of stablecoins is not small, but compared with the traditional payment market size of 10 trillion US dollars, it seems a bit "naive". However, if stablecoins are expected to become a single trillion-dollar market in the next 3-5 years, perhaps it has just passed the starting stage.

So Circle's listing is more like a small carnival to bring "rectification" to stablecoins, and the big show after the carnival has just begun. As the most mature application in the Crypto industry besides trading, stablecoins may be the real stepping stone for Web3/Crypto applications to enter thousands of households, rather than the NFT craze in the early years.

For investors and entrepreneurs, this period also contains many opportunities. After all, making money with money is always a good business, but if you can't be a creator of money, at least you can be a service provider in this field. Everything has just begun, and risks and opportunities coexist.

So, what will be the market value of Circle in 4 years?