Cryptocurrency firm Circle announced last week it plans to become a public company by merging with a SPAC, Concord Acquisition Corp, backed by former Barclays executive Bob Diamond. The deal values the company at $4.5 billion and includes $415 in PIPE financing. In its prior round, Circle had raised $440 million, bringing its total its war chest to $1.1 billion.

Circle is the entity behind USDC, the fast-growing stablecoin. While concerns about the reserves and transparency of Tether persist, USDC has grown by 3,400% in 2021 alone. There are now $25 billion USDC in circulation, up from $1 billion a year ago, and according to recent disclosures, Circle projects circulation of nearly $200 billion by the end of 2023. The company sees its total long-term addressable market is the entire global money supply, or $130 trillion.

Right now, USDC is only Circle's second-highest grossing business line behind treasury and transaction services, where it counts Dapper Labs and FTX among its biggest customers. But CEO Jeremy Allaire sees the stablecoin as its defining franchise. In addition to using the fresh capital to scale the business, he sought a public listing in order to increase the level of transparency around USDC. As opposed to Tether, which still has yet to be fully audited, USDC will provide a transparent look into the composition of its reserves with every SEC public filing, offering the same level of scrutiny of any bank or payments company.

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