Circle Stock Jumps as USDC Stablecoin Expands to Sam Altman’s World Chain

Shares of stablecoin giant Circle are up more than 10% today as the firm’s USDC stablecoin and cross-chain transfer protocol expand to World Chain, the blockchain co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that’s focused on human verification.

As part of the integration, all bridged USDC tokens on World Chain were automatically upgraded to the newly launched native USDC. 

“We’re excited to announce that native USDC and CCTP V2 are now live on World Chain,” the firm wrote in a blog about the announcement. “This upgrade enhances liquidity, security, and capital efficiency for developers and users across the World Chain ecosystem.”

The expansion now puts USDC, the second largest stablecoin, on 21 different blockchains, the announcement says. 

Circle stock (CRCL) is currently trading above $116, up more than 10% on the day and sitting at a price nearly four times its $31 IPO price. Listed on the Nasdaq, CRCL pumped as high as $138.57 on Monday.

After hitting the public market last week, the stock was initially halted multiple times on its first day of trading, jumping to more than three times its IPO price in a matter of minutes.

That debut exceeded the initial performance of major publicly traded tech companies like Meta, Robinhood, and Airbnb upon their respective listings.

The IPO, which raised $1.1 billion for the firm and early shareholders, accelerates a trend of crypto companies going public. In May, trading platform eToro made its debut on public markets. Prior to that, Bitcoin rewards company Fold went public as well. 

Neither, though, saw as much success upon debut as shares of CRCL, which scored a major victory when compared to the initial listings of other crypto-focused companies, in terms of share price surge after offering.

However, another prominent crypto firm may join the race soon, with New York-based exchange Gemini recently filing for its own IPO. 

Circle, now valued around $28.34 billion, sought to go public as early as 2022. But plans to go public via a merger with a SPAC fell through at the time. 

Edited by Andrew Hayward