Dan Bin makes a move, building a position in Circle

Author: Lawyer Liu Honglin

Tonight I came across a somewhat inconspicuous piece of news: According to the latest disclosed 13F filing, Dongfang Harbor’s overseas fund, in the most recent reporting period, bought over 30k shares of Circle, with a market value of over three million USD, accounting for less than 0.3% of the entire portfolio.

If you only look at this number, there’s nothing particularly special about it; such a position size is quite common among many institutions.

But the underlying asset makes this story a bit more interesting.

What is Circle: The Business Logic of Stablecoin Issuers

Circle is one of the stablecoin issuers, and it just went public on the NYSE in 2025. Breaking down its business, it’s quite simple: users exchange dollars for USDC, the company then allocates these funds into short-term U.S. Treasuries or deposits in banks, earning a spread.

From this perspective, it’s more like a financial business that can be accounted for, rather than a project purely driven by narrative.

Circle itself has also experienced a typical process of being repeatedly revalued by the market. When it went public, the IPO price was $31, and after listing, market sentiment was very high, with the stock price quickly rising above $200, and the market cap once reaching hundreds of billions of dollars. But then it experienced a noticeable pullback, with significant volatility.

On the surface, it’s just price fluctuations, but behind the scenes, the market is repeatedly judging: how should this company be valued—based on the crypto industry, based on financial companies, or a bit of both?

Why did Dongfang Harbor buy Circle?

So, rather than calling this a “crypto news,” it’s more accurate to say this is a story about Dongfang Harbor.

If you understand Bian’s investment style, you’ll know that his approach over the years has been quite consistent: from consumer and internet sectors to tech giants, fundamentally, he’s looking for companies with strong certainty that can be held long-term. His style has always been restrained, especially with assets that are volatile and hard to price, rarely taking large positions directly.

This is also why, despite the crypto industry’s hotness in recent years, you rarely see such funds directly buying Bitcoin or various tokens.

So why did they buy Circle this time? My understanding is: compared to directly buying tokens, a company like Circle has at least a few aspects that traditional funds can accept:

It’s a listed company, with financial reports and disclosures, allowing analysis in familiar ways.

It has revenue, and the revenue logic is quite clear—mainly from spreads.

Its operations are focused, mainly revolving around stablecoins.

In other words, as a traditional investment institution, you can roughly evaluate whether it’s a worthwhile business using your existing methods.

Because of my work, Lawyer Honglin often communicates with many investment friends. Many mainstream funds have been exploring Web3 in recent years, researching it, but few have entered on a large scale.

The reasons are not complicated: directly buying cryptocurrencies is too volatile; buying tokens makes fundamental analysis difficult; participating in early-stage projects involves too much information asymmetry.

Often, it’s a matter of agreeing on the general direction but not finding a convenient way to participate.

Companies like Circle, to some extent, provide a more accessible path. You don’t need to bear the sharp price swings of tokens, nor do you need to judge whether a project will succeed, but instead, you can participate in the industry’s gradual growth through a company.

The Narrative of Stablecoins is Changing

Looking further, the story of stablecoins itself is also gradually evolving.

In the past, people used stablecoins mainly for trading convenience or on-chain operations. But now, some scenarios are changing—more cross-border payment use cases, more online e-commerce, and the use of stablecoins is becoming more widespread. With the recent AI boom, people are also paying attention to the logic of stablecoin usage when AI participates in trading—because it’s a tool that can automatically execute and settle at any time.

Therefore, for the stablecoin business, it’s not necessary to give it a very large definition. Simply put, the more people use it and the more places it’s used, the more it resembles a business that can be sustained long-term.

Behind the $3 million USD, a Pathway for Traditional Funds

Returning to the main topic, this $3 million position itself is not particularly important.

But it provides a clear answer: when traditional funds start to seriously look at Web3, their first reaction isn’t to buy tokens, but to find assets that can be understood as “companies.”

In other words, they are not participating in a completely new world but are first approaching it with familiar methods.

From this perspective, companies like Circle essentially serve as a “translator”—connecting on-chain applications with traditional financial systems. You may not understand the entire industry, but at least you can understand what they’re doing, where the money comes from, and what the risks are.

This is also something many people underestimate. If Web3 remains only at the level of prices and narratives, traditional funds will find it hard to truly enter; but once a batch of companies that can be clearly explained and incorporated into balance sheets appear, the way to participate in the industry will change.

So, what Dongfang Harbor bought may not just be Circle; fundamentally, it’s testing a path: not directly becoming a player, but standing on the side, finding a position that’s understandable and can be held long-term.

Whether this path is ultimately the best solution remains uncertain. But what is certain is that as more money begins to enter Web3 through this approach, the industry itself will gradually change.