By Hannah Lang and Suzanne McGee
(Reuters) -Stablecoin issuer Circle’s $1.05 billion initial public offering on Thursday could spur other large crypto players to follow suit as the industry benefits from U.S. President Donald Trump’s embrace of the sector, according to experts and analysts.
Circle priced its shares at $31 on Wednesday. In a sign of investor demand, they opened on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday at $69 apiece and closed at $83.23.
That trajectory is likely to encourage other crypto companies eyeing stock market debuts. Circle is the first major crypto company to go public since crypto exchange Coinbase listed on Nasdaq in 2021.
Analysts have pointed to crypto exchanges Kraken and Gemini as other potential IPO candidates in the digital asset sector. Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment.
“It would not be surprising if other crypto companies follow suit,” said Jacob Zuller, an analyst at Third Bridge. “Public markets have accepted that crypto is not going away.”
Circle issues stablecoin USDC, a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar and designed to maintain a constant value. Crypto traders use stablecoins to move funds between tokens and proponents say they could be used to send and receive payments instantly.
“We’ve had a deep conviction from the inception of the company that we could build a new infrastructure for money, built on the internet, that could radically reshape the utility of money,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said in an interview with Reuters.
Circle’s IPO success demonstrates that there is pent-up demand in the public markets for crypto and other financial technology companies, said Dan Dolev, senior analyst at Mizuho.
“If IPOs go wild, it’s a good bellwether,” he said.
NYSE Group President Lynn Martin went a step further, calling Circle’s IPO a positive sign not just for crypto listings, but for IPOs in general.
“I see the Circle IPO as a bellwether for the IPO markets this year, not just for crypto listings,” she said.
Fintech companies have been warmly received in recent months. Shares in retail brokerage eToro surged 34% in their Nasdaq debut in May. Digital banking startup Chime is seeking a more than $11 billion valuation when it launches next week.
Investment interest in digital assets “is coming from all corners,” said Sui Chung, CEO of crypto index provider CF Benchmarks.
“There’s a plethora of high tech and blockchain-focused investment funds, and these vehicles have been starved of new issues for a long time,” said Chung.
After crypto exchange FTX collapsed in 2022, many institutional investors shunned the digital asset market. Crypto prices eventually recovered, and the industry got a major boost when Trump professed support on the campaign trail, pledging to be a “crypto president.”
In his first week in office, Trump created a cryptocurrency working group to propose digital asset regulations. In March, he hosted crypto executives at the White House.
Congress is also widely expected to pass legislation this year creating a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins that experts say could pave the way for their widespread use.
(Reporting by Hannah Lang in New York and Suzanne McGee, Additional reporting by Anirban Sen; editing by Pete Schroeder and Cynthia Osterman)
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