Analysis: Is Circle's IPO at $30B a fair price?
From $31 to $120 per share, Circle proves the market wants stablecoin exposure.
Gm Fintech Architects —
Today we are diving into the following topics:
Summary: We discuss Circle’s blockbuster IPO, which priced at $31 per share, raised $1 billion at an $8 billion valuation, and surged to $120 post-listing — making it the best-performing fintech IPO in recent memory. The market rewarded Circle’s position as the only public pure-play stablecoin issuer with strong cashflows, regulatory tailwinds, and massive growth potential in a crypto-forward environment. Despite similar financial profiles, legacy fintech peers like Payoneer and Airwallex have received far lower valuations, reflecting investor expectations that Circle could scale USDC to trillions in assets and tap into global money market revenue. Still, the long-term sustainability of this valuation will depend on whether stablecoins truly replace legacy payment rails or simply coexist. The IPO also serves as a reminder that public markets are driven by a complex mix of fundamentals, technical float dynamics, and sentiment cycles—where early success can mean future volatility.
Topics: Circle, USDC, Coinbase, Airwallex, Jack Zhang, Payoneer, Fidelity, Schwab, SoFi, Robinhood, Block, Marqeta, Affirm, F-Prime
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Long Take
What Happened with Circle?
By all accounts, Circle has had a blockbuster IPO.
In our primer, we suggested a fair value between $5-10B for the company, highlighting its revenue path, material distribution agreements with Coinbase, and the rise of many new competitors.
Wall Street didn’t seem to care.
As the only public pure-play stablecoin bet in 2025 with a sufficiently profitable cashflow engine, operating in the most crypto friendly environment ever on record, Circle has become a blockbuster.
The stablecoin company raised around $1B in proceeds on an $8B marketcap, which translated into a $31 price per share. The pre-IPO round was 25x oversubscribed, initially coming to market at $28 per share. Many institutional investors did not even get the allocation they desired. Since listing, the price has tripled to $120.
We celebrate this outcome, because of the impact it will have on people and the sector.
Circle has about 1000 employees, and at a $30B valuation, the average marketcap per person is $30MM. If employee ownership were even 10% of the company, we would have a large number of angel investors who could invest in subsequent innovations. As for the management team and lieutenants, this is now a crop of talent who choose to be entrepreneurs motivated by curiosity and expertise, rather than financial optimization.
Not everyone is happy.
I’ve heard from many experienced payments and fintech people about this transaction. I wouldn’t call it jealousy, but perhaps a sense of not being appreciated by the market. The most viral example at the moment is from Jack Zhang, founder of Airwallex.
Airwallex is one of the largest cross-border money movement companies, incorporating payment rails, bank accounts, and CFO suite tooling. We have a podcast coming up on Airwallex, and their company is truly a wonder, having raised $300MM at a $6.2B valuation and covered the world in money infrastructure.
Airwallex takes the existing thing and improves it. Why should he care about the new thing that isn’t as popular yet?
As I said, Jack is not alone in this sentiment.
Why does Circle get a 50x valuation on net revenue ($600MM is about total revenue less distribution), whereas other fintechs have to fight for their 10x multiples?
As another example, take a look at Payoneer. The company offers a cross-border payment platform, and its product descriptions will remind the reader of TransferWise, Swift, and every other international money movement firm. In our coverage of the Circle Payment Network, we highlighted all these different webs of nodes as doing identically the same job – moving liquidity around the world while trying to remain compliant.
Payoneer went through a SPAC in 2021 and has had a mixed public performance. While their financial performance appears to be doing great, the stock suffered — falling from a $4B high to a current of $2.2B while growing the company steadily. One can point to the fragility of net interest income as a revenue source in an environment of slow economic growth, or the company’s exposure to China.
Now, Payoneer is considering a go-private transaction to avoid the volatility. Let me restate that. On nearly $1B of revenues and profitability comparable to Circle, the company is trading at $2.5B and wants to go private.
It makes sense the Paytechs are annoyed with Circle.
Why is it special?
The answer points, always, to expectations about the future. If we go from a world of core banking systems and card networks to everything being on blockchains, then Circle has unlimited growth. USDC can go from $100B today to $10T in the future. For reference, consider again the Fidelity and Schwab money market funds at around $1T each.
Why is this any different?
And if it can make 2% net interest margin on $60B for $2B of gross revenue roughly, then it can do the same on $10T for $200B of revenue. Stablecoins can be the size of the Internet. Payoneer, even if kept up 20% annual growth for the next 10 years, cannot.
Welcome to the land of magical thinking. 🦄🌈
I like it here.
Performance Relative to Fintech IPOs
As part of our adventure, let’s take a look at Circle’s IPO performance relative to its peer group.
To be fair, the last window to go public was right after the end of Covid, when digital adoption had skyrocketed and fiscal stimulus made everyone feel irrationally rich. The 2022 SPAC boom and fintech listings were a prelude to a dire bear market that wiped out 50%+ of performance. Further, the interest rate regime change devalued the entire technology sector as it re-priced to a higher cost of capital.
I’ll do it anyway.
We will avoid SPAC listings and focus only on companies that going the more traditional round. This will include SoFi, Robinhood, Square/Block, Marqeta, and Affirm. For inspiration, we recommend you reference the F-Prime Index of public companies here.
How unusual is Circle?
On a 1-day basis, we will use the pre-IPO pricing to do the calculation. Below you can see that there was real dispersion. Circle (up 150%+) and Robinhood (up 100%) showed some of the best gains relative to their initial pricing. Both Block and Mareta did alright, while Affirm and SoFi were under pressure.
For the 7-day analysis, we are using the Nasdaq open, which was uniformly higher than the pre-IPO pricing. The companies largely stayed around the same value, with some softness relative to the early highs.
Let’s zoom out to a monthly view.