Circle

Financial services and payments technology company

Basics

• Founded in October 2013
• Based in Boston
• A peer-to-peer payments technology company utilizing traditional fiat currencies and previously offering bitcoin, although support for the buying of bitcoins through Circle has now been removed
• This removal resulted in a lot of 1 star reviews in the App Store, which Circle tried to counter with fake 5 star reviews. This was noticed however and they might get banned from the App Store completely.

Projects

• Bought Poloniex in 2018, sold it to Tron.
• Circle’s mobile payment platform, Circle Pay, allows users to hold, send, and receive traditional fiat currencies
• Has a stablecoin, USDC, together with Coinbase.
• Launched Euro Coin (17-6-2022).

Compliance

• From Cointelegraph (8-8-2022):

"Dune Analytics said that Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, froze over 75,000 USDC worth of funds linked to the 44 Tornado Cash addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list."

• This week (8-10-2021), USDC-issuer Circle Financial revealed it received an “investigative subpoena” from the SEC’s Enforcement Division in July.
• Circle has detailed (9-8-2021) its plans to become a National Digital Currency Bank operating under federal oversight. The move would see Circle comply with federal banking rules, which are much stricter than state banking regulation.
• Has become more under scrutiny for its lack of transparency into what they have their reserves invested in (7-7-2021).
• In September 2015, Circle received the first BitLicense issued from the New York State Department of Financial Services. In April 2016, the British government approved the first virtual currency licensure to Circle.

Team, investors, partners, etc.

Team

• Allaire, Jeremy; founder & CEO
• Neville, Sean; founder (stepped down (12-2019) as co-CEO he will remain on the board as an independent director. Left due to the sale of Poloniex)
• Circle’s head of trading, Dan Matuszewski, has announced internally that he is moving on from the company: CoinDesk; he’s being replaced by Nick Gustafson, a Kraken and UBS alum.
• Circle continues (7-2019) to shrink with two over the counter traders departing since May; that same month Circle cut 30 staff or 10% of its staff due to 'regulatory' concerns within the U.S., its primary mark.
• From Decrypt (5-7-2022):

"Circle stated it’s “built for the long term” and will hire strategically over the next 18 months, according to a press release posted on the company’s website. The release said Circle has already hired hundreds of workers so far this year and that the company is “well positioned” to “build for the future,” regardless of how icy this crypto winter may get."

Funding

• Coinbase acquired a stake in Circle, and with it comes that Circle will be the sole issuer of USDC (22-8-2023).
• Got investment from the Digital Currency Group
• Got 110 million dollar investment from Bitmain, plans next USDTether
• Has been known to invest big in stablecoins
• Is a sponsor of Coin Center
• Raised $440M (28-5-2021):

"Among those taking part in the $440 million round were Fidelity, FTX, Digital Currency Group, Marshall Wace, Valor Capital Group, Pillar VC, Intersection Fintech Ventures, Atlas Merchant Capital and Willett Advisors, among others."

• Is going public in a SPAC deal that values the crypto financial services firm at $4.5 billion (8-7-2021). Got updated to $9B (17-2-2022). On 8-12-2022, Circle announced it abandoned its IPO plans.
• KuCoin; Circle Ventures took part in a $150 million funding round in the exchange (10-5-2022).
• Aptos; part of their $150 million (26-7-2022) in a Series A funding round (already had a $200M funding round before)
• Sui; It was one of the lead investors in Sui's $300M Series B (9-9-2022). Invested in both Aptos as Sui.
• Had investment from Alameda Research/FTX, which came out (11-11-2022) during the FTX crash. This could mean fall-out risk. Alameda turned out to have invested $10M in exchange for convertible notes (8-12-2022).

Circle Ventures

• Got announced on 6-7-2022.
• Architect; took part in the $5M raise by former FTX US president Brett Harrison (20-1-2023).
• Catalyst; participated in their $4.2M seed raise (26-4-2023).
• LayerZero; participated in their Series B of $120M (4-4-2023).
• Sei; a strategic investment (15-11-2023).
• WalletConnect; part of their $12.5M raise (2-11-2022).

Partners

• "According to recent LinkedIn post, Circle is hiring a General Partner to raise a $100M venture capital fund; the firm acquired SeedInvest earlier this year, and will be looking to leverage their deal flow and network of investors"
• Circle also has Goldman Sachs and IDG Capital Partners, a China-focused investment firm as its investors that raised about $140 million and has a valuation of approximately $420 million. Update: "The Information reports that Circle is looking to raise a $250M round of debt and equity funding as they grapple with the impact of crypto winter; the company has raised $246M from the likes of Accel, General Catalyst, Goldman Sachs, Baidu, and IDG Capital, most recently a $110M Series E led by Chinese mining giant Bitmain at a nearly $3B valuation last year"
• Partner with Bloq
• Partner with Securitize
• Founding member of the Crypto Rating Council (9-2019).
• Is a partner with FTX, according to the About Us page of FTX (20-4-2020).