The stablecoin market welcomes a significant turning point, Circle's listing marks the beginning of a new era.

The stablecoin industry is迎来 a critical turning point. With Circle successfully landing on the US capital market, it marks the first time stablecoins have entered the mainstream stage of the global financial system. This is not only a commercial milestone but also indicates that the financial order may face reconstruction. Compliant stablecoins are no longer just circulating tools on the chain, but are a strategic lever for the dollar's global "de-banking and de-geographization" expansion.

Recently, the regulatory frameworks for stablecoins have been successively implemented in several countries and regions. Tether, representing the "gray dollar," and Circle, representing the "whitelist dollar," have officially parted ways. Circle's listing is not only a capitalization event for the crypto industry but also marks another structural upgrade in the globalization of the dollar, serving as the starting point for compliant dollar financial sovereignty output on-chain.

According to authoritative agencies, the total market value of global stablecoins is expected to reach between 1.6 trillion and 3.7 trillion US dollars by 2030, with the growth mainly concentrated in three areas: cross-border payments, on-chain finance, and tokenization of real-world assets.

• Cross-border payments will become a core driving scenario. The average settlement cost of stablecoins is over 90% lower than traditional SWIFT paths, making it particularly attractive for emerging markets.
• RWA connects on-chain with real-world assets. Stablecoins serve as the on-chain funding side, while RWA serves as the asset side, and together they form a growth flywheel.
• Native scenarios of virtual assets continuously provide basic liquidity. On-chain lending, derivatives, and other protocols continue to absorb stablecoins as collateral, forming an underlying "USD liquidity pool".

Stablecoins are gradually evolving from a transfer channel for funds in the crypto space to the "dollar liquidity core" in the Web3 native operating system.

Currently, Circle faces a dual competition: on one hand, it must compete with on-chain native players like Tether in terms of liquidity coverage and usage flexibility, and on the other hand, it must contend with traditional financial giants for the right to export stablecoin systems. Circle's core advantages include:

1. The compliance first-mover advantage is expected to become the "on-system stablecoin" carrier for the on-chain dollar expansion strategy.
2. Open infrastructure and ecological network, achieving multi-chain support, cross-chain protocols, and deep integration with exchanges and DeFi.
3. Institutional-level trust is currently the only widely accepted "institutional-level stablecoin" product.

With the acceleration of global regulatory policies, the operational thresholds and costs for non-compliant issuers continue to rise. Circle's institutional compliance and auditability are gradually transforming into competitive advantages, and its ecological embedding capabilities in scenarios such as DeFi, wallets, and payment protocols are continuously strengthening. Although it is difficult to surpass USDT in terms of liquidity scale in the gray market, Circle is building irreplaceability from an institutional level and capturing the compliant market share of USDT.

At the same time, as market access rules become clearer, banks and payment institutions are also accelerating their entry, challenging USDC's compliance lead time. Circle's current compliance license barrier advantage is relatively limited, and several traditional financial institutions have begun to catch up.

In incremental scenarios such as RWA, USDC must complete the upgrade from "licensed stablecoin" to "on-chain system coin". BCG predicts that by 2030, the global RWA market size will exceed 16 trillion USD. Stablecoins need "asset anchoring" to establish trust and expand scenarios, while RWA requires "on-chain funds" to obtain liquidity. The two together form a value closed loop connecting the real world with the on-chain world. Circle needs to bind new asset classes of incremental RWA to win dominance in on-chain payments and transaction settlements; otherwise, its application layer will be continuously eroded, and its valuation ceiling will also be suppressed.

From a business model perspective, Circle's current profit structure is relatively simple, with high sensitivity to interest rates. In 2024, revenue is expected to be around $1.7 billion, with a net profit of $160 million, 99% of which comes from reserve interest. At the same time, there is a high degree of reliance on channels, with Coinbase almost monopolizing the monetization efficiency. In the future, Circle needs to expand its revenue scenarios through on-chain payment APIs, stablecoin cross-chain channels, wallet accounts, and other modules to increase its B2B profitability.

In terms of finance and valuation, Circle's IPO valuation is approximately $8.1 billion, with a PE of about 50 times and PS of about 5 times based on the 2024 financial report data. From the perspective of profit margin and cash flow structure, the valuation has already achieved a relatively optimistic pricing. Compared to Tether, Circle's net profit margin and AUM efficiency are lower, mainly influenced by compliance costs and channel profit sharing. However, compliance is an inevitable trend and is also the key to attracting mainstream institutional funds.

In terms of investment strategy, during the IPO phase, market sentiment is high, and there are short-term trading opportunities due to emotional premiums. However, attention should be paid to the potential volatility of valuation regression, with major risks coming from interest rate declines leading to spread compression, as well as the income sensitivity that may be exposed due to the channel's bargaining power not being fully established. In the medium to long term, the key factors are the expansion of new business, whether reliance on channels decreases, and the ability to integrate into the global payment network. Investors are currently buying compliance licenses and the future pricing power of the on-chain payment network, rather than current profits.

Overall, the stablecoin market is on the verge of an unprecedented explosion. The rigid demand for payment and trading provides continuous growth fuel, while the trends of compliance, institutionalization, and mainstreaming are shaping it into the core infrastructure of on-chain finance. Circle is at the core intersection of this trend, possessing advantages such as compliance legitimacy, open infrastructure capabilities, and institutional-level trust structures. However, it also faces challenges such as a single income structure and channel dependency.

The IPO of Circle is not the end, but the starting point for the formal entry of global stablecoins into the institutional track. What the capital market is truly betting on is whether it can play a key protocol layer role in the global on-chain dollar consensus system. The story of Circle truly begins when USDC becomes the universal circulating underlying of the "on-chain dollar."