Just noticed something worth paying attention to in the crypto IPO space. Circle, the company behind USD Coin, went public back in June 2025 at $31 and has climbed to around $87 since then. That's a solid run, and there's actually some interesting stuff happening behind the scenes that explains the momentum.

What caught my eye is how aggressively major players are adopting USDC. Visa started letting its banking partners settle card transactions directly in USD Coin on Circle's blockchain instead of going through traditional payment rails. Intuit went even further, embedding USDC into TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Credit Karma to speed up payments and refunds. These aren't small experiments—they're major fintech companies betting on blockchain-based stablecoin infrastructure.

The thing that makes Circle different from other stablecoin issuers is the backing. USDC is directly supported by actual cash and U.S. Treasuries held by regulated custodians. That transparency matters, especially when you're comparing it to stablecoins backed by more opaque assets.

Here's where it gets interesting though. Bermuda launched a pilot program earlier this year to build a fully on-chain national economy using USD Coin for government payments and merchant transactions. If that works, you could see other countries like Japan, Brazil, and Mexico follow suit. That's the kind of adoption that could genuinely reshape how Circle makes money—moving from relying mostly on yield from Treasury investments to actually collecting platform and infrastructure fees.

Analysts are projecting 26% annual revenue growth through 2027, with profitability this year and an 82% EPS increase by 2027. The stock trades at about 50 times next year's earnings, which isn't cheap, but it also doesn't feel like a bubble either.

The crypto IPO market has shown there's real appetite for legitimate blockchain infrastructure plays, and Circle's partnerships with Visa and Intuit suggest institutional confidence in where this is heading. Whether it becomes a major global payments platform or stays niche probably depends on how quickly those country-level pilots gain traction. Worth monitoring if you're thinking about exposure to the blockchain infrastructure angle of crypto.