(Bloomberg) -- Cryptocurrency company Circle Internet Financial Ltd.’s yearslong ambitions to go public are alive and well, and the company has no need to tap private markets for capital as it continues to pursue a stock-market listing, Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Allaire said.
“We are very committed to the path” of going public, Allaire said in an interview with Bloomberg in Washington. “We think we can be a really interesting company in public markets.”
The second-largest stablecoin issuer’s attempts to go public have been tumultuous after an effort to combine with blank-check company Concord Acquisition Corp. failed in 2022. Circle chose a more traditional path earlier this year when it confidentially filed a draft registration for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission in January.
Allaire declined to comment on any engagement the company has had with the SEC or other regulators in the 9-1/2 months since the draft IPO registration was filed, a period marked by a widespread US government crackdown on companies in the crypto industry. While the wait for the IPO approval process drags on, Allaire said there’s no need for the company to raise more capital.
“We’re in a financially strong position and have been able to build a very solid business, and we’re currently not seeking any funding,” Allaire said.
Investors in the business include Wall Street heavyweights such as General Catalyst Partners, BlackRock Inc., Fidelity Management and Research LLC and Marshall Wace LLP, as well as crypto-native outfits like Coinbase Global Inc..
The company has been beefing up its staffing this year in anticipation of becoming publicly traded, Bloomberg reported in June. The hiring spree was also driven by optimism that Washington lawmakers may finally offer the industry some of the regulatory framework it’s clamored for in the form of a stablecoin bill.
Several draft versions of crypto-related bills are under consideration on Capitol Hill, and Allaire said there’s strong optimism that stablecoin legislation may even be passed during the lame-duck session following November elections.
Collectively worth $170.5 billion, stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that aim to track the value of another asset, typically the US dollar. They are popular among traders as a means of moving digital assets between exchanges or sheltering crypto wealth during periods of market volatility. They also are increasingly being used for cross-border payments by companies. Circle’s dollar-tracking stablecoin, known as USDC, has a market capitalization of $34.4 billion, making it the sixth-biggest cryptocurrency and the second-largest stablecoin after Tether’s USDT, according to CoinMarketCap.
New regulatory guardrails will give comfort to more traditional financial players, from banks to asset managers to payment companies, to enter the digital asset ecosystem, Allaire said.
“They’re only going to work with regulated infrastructure,” he said. “We’ve already positioned ourselves toward that end.”
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