Circle's IPO Sparks Controversy: Participants in the encryption Industry Feel Ignored

Recently, USDC stablecoin issuer Circle completed its initial public offering ( IPO ), sparking widespread discussion within the encryption circle. As an industry insider, a seasoned investor criticized Circle's tendency to favor traditional financial institutions in the IPO allocation while neglecting crypto-native participants, and used this to explore the dilemma of the core concept of "alignment of interests" in the traditional IPO system.

The IPO pricing of Circle was set at $31 per share, higher than the initial expected range of $24 to $26. The closing price on the first day reached $84, and a week later the stock price even broke $107. This shows the investment banks' misjudgment of the IPO pricing and reflects Wall Street's strong interest in encryption assets, especially stablecoins.

Reasons to support investing in CRCL( Circle stock code ) include:

• This is the first and only listed investment target in the market focused on the growth of stablecoins.
• The stablecoin market is expected to grow to over $1 trillion in managed assets.
• USDC currently has an asset management scale of 60 billion USD, with an annual growth rate of 91%.

But there are also some potential risks:

• The business model is overly reliant on interest rates, with all income derived from interest revenue.
• Rely on Coinbase as the issuance agent, which takes about half of the interest revenue.
• Relying on BlackRock, which has partnerships with several banks entering the stablecoin market.
• Slow revenue and profit growth over the past three and a half years.
• The current stock price valuation of 107 dollars is relatively high.

Some early supporters and users in the encryption industry are disappointed with Circle's IPO allocation strategy. They believe that Circle's choice to allocate the majority of shares to traditional financial institutions, rather than to the crypto-native funds that have long supported the development of USDC, is a major mistake.

The investor emphasized that his criticism was not based on personal emotions but rather on the consideration of promoting the healthy development of the encryption industry and adhering to the principle of integrity. He believes that when companies enable their customers to profit, the company will naturally succeed as well. "Alignment of interests" is one of the core concepts of the encryption industry, but Circle's approach in this IPO seems to deviate from this principle.

In response to some critical voices, this investor also made a reply:

1. He emphasized that IPO allocations are different from token airdrops, and he is willing to purchase shares at the same price rather than asking for them to be given for free.
2. The IPO allocation decision is primarily controlled by the issuer ( Circle ) rather than the underwriters.
3. The so-called "25 times oversubscription" may just be a "cosmetic" change in the final data and does not reflect actual fairness.

It is still difficult to conclude whether Circle's IPO placement will affect its future development and the adoption of USDC. Industry insiders are closely monitoring the upcoming 13F filings to understand which investors Circle ultimately chose to share its growth dividends.