Circle Stock Climbs: CRCL Quadruples IPO Price as Bitcoin Regains

USDC issuer Circle, which made its whirlwind of a New York Stock Exchange debut yesterday, has already topped the high it set on Thursday.

Around 1pm ET on Friday, CRCL reached a high of $123.51—just 49 cents shy of fully quadrupling its IPO price.  The stock is already trading 44% higher than its $83.23 close at a current price just shy of $120. It's a strong follow after the company tripled its $31 IPO price on its opening day.

As of this writing, the company has reached an intraday market capitalization of $21.7 billion after closing the books on its IPO round with an $18.4 billion valuation.

CRCL's continued rise on Friday comes as Bitcoin bounced back above the $105,000 mark in morning trading, after briefly diving below $101,000 on Thursday afternoon. Bitcoin is currently trading at $104,675, up 1% over the past day.

Dom Kwok, co-founder of the Web3 development tutoring app EasyA, said on X that retail investors should be wary of buying up CRCL shares after seeing its first-day performance. That's because Wall Street analysts tend to price in an initial pop.

"Wait 90-180 days after IPO to invest," he wrote, "not just to allow for price discovery, but because that's typically when the lockup period ends."

The lockup period refers to the time during which early investors and insiders are prohibited from selling their shares. When the period expires, there can be a sudden influx of selling pressure.

Kwok added that because virtually all of Circle's revenue comes from interest earned on the cash backing its stablecoins, "When rates drop (which they will), Circle's revenues will fall massively."

Bitwise's Juan Leon called Circle's big splash a "moon landing" moment for stablecoins on Wall Street.

Macquarie analyst Paul Golding, meanwhile, said he's optimistic about stablecoins—but for reasons that have nothing to do with the Circle IPO.

That's because the GENIUS Act, which would create guidelines for stablecoin issuers that offer their tokens to U.S. investors, squeaked by with enough support from Democrats in a preliminary to advance to a final vote in the Senate.

"The GENIUS Act could accelerate the evolution of payments towards stablecoin as highlighted in Visa's recent investor day," he wrote, referring the company's February meeting. "[Stablecoins], paired with Visa's cutting-edge technology, hold the potential to revolutionize global financial systems, making payments more seamless and secure."

As of this writing, Visa has processed $3.8 trillion in stablecoin transactions in the past month alone, and $249 trillion since it began tracking in 2019, according to the company's tracker.

Edited by Andrew Hayward