Term Sheet | Fortune Circle's IPO pop

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From: CEO Daily | Fortune - Friday Jun 06, 2025 10:54 am
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Friday, June 6, 2025
Circle’s CEO is thrilled over SEC oversight

The 2025 Fortune 500 is here—and the story’s just getting started. From AI breakthroughs and DEI rollbacks to leadership exits and return-to-office showdowns, this year’s business landscape is shifting fast. We’ve published the list. Now we’re tracking the moves.
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• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on Circle’s IPO pop.
 • The big story: Elon Musk and Donald Trump are fighting.
 • The markets: Up in U.S. before jobs report.
 • Analyst notes from UBS, BofA, and Goldman Sachs.
 • Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Yesterday was a very good day for Jeremy Allaire, as shares in his crypto firm Circle (CRCL) began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, closing at 168% above its $31 IPO price (the company upsized the IPO the night before its debut). “As we went through our IPO Road Show and ultimately priced the deal, we saw an incredible amount of interest and enthusiasm from an incredibly broad and deep array of investors,” Allaire told me in a phone conversation on Thursday. 

It’s been a long journey for Allaire, who tried to take the stablecoin issuer public through a SPAC merger in 2021 but didn’t get approval from the SEC, which had then questioned how to classify its USD Coin, a form of cryptocurrency backed by the U.S. dollar, and the company itself.

Fast forward and it’s a new day. The GENIUS Act just passed the Senate with bipartisan support and looks likely to become law, providing a federal framework for regulating stablecoins. (The House introduced its own stablecoin bill.) Said Allaire: “No matter what your political affiliation is, sound regulation makes sense, especially when a technology like this is on the cusp of such widespread adoption.”

For Allaire, though, nothing matches the thrill of being under the watch of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “As a financial platform and financial infrastructure company that people are going to build on, where we’re actually issuing a new kind of money, being public really matters,” he said. “Becoming an SEC-regulated and supervised company just strengthens those attributes at a time where stable coin is becoming a global mainstream phenomenon.”

At the end of a long day, Allaire told me he’s grateful to his family, his team, developers that build applications on this technology, and the broad and deep array of investors that helped give Circle a successful debut. But, he says, he doesn’t want to get too caught up in the stock price. “What’s important is that we’re building a great company. We’ve got investors that want to be with us. We’ve got a lot to do.”

More news below.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
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The markets

• The S&P 500 was down 0.5% Wednesday. The index is up 1.0% YTD. 
 • S&P futures were trading up 0.5% this morning. 
 • The Stoxx Europe 600 was flat in early trading. 
 • Asia was mixed: Japan was up 0.5%. Hong Kong dropped 0.5%. Shanghai was flat and India’s Nifty 50 was up 1.0%.
 • Bitcoin was sitting up at $103,800 this morning.

From the analysts 

• UBS on May jobs: "The US May employment report is due, with the regular reminders that this data has become increasingly unreliable in recent years, and average earnings are not wages. This month’s data will correct errors that crept into last month’s data. Signs of weakness in restaurant and leisure travel sectors mean fewer lower paid workers may be employed, raising average earnings without affecting wages. But, the Federal Reserve’s “data dependency” means the labor market is seen as a trigger for policy action. Expectations are for fewer jobs to have been created (and the most common forecast is for a payrolls figure below consensus). Firms may have slowed hiring as trade policy uncertainty has increased, but there is unlikely to be an increase in firing. That does mean that rate cuts would have a limited impact right now (although if consumer demand weakens, rate cuts become more important)," per Paul Donovan.
 • BofA on jobs and the Fed: "Another busy week in uncertain times. ADP employment and ISM services surprised on the downside, and there was a larger than expected uptick in jobless claims. But the most important release of the week is today's non-farm payrolls. We expect an above-consensus 150k increase to show the labor market remains resilient. This should keep the Fed on hold for an extended period, against a more constructive rates view that the market focusing more on stag than flation seems to have … The 150k forecast we have for payrolls would come aſter a 177k print in April. One of the main reasons we are above consensus is that while firms likely paused the hiring of trade & transportation workers aſter the front-loading driven increase in the previous months, we don't think they would have already started shedding workers. We expect the u-rate to remain at 4.2%," per Claudio Irigoyen et al.
 • Goldman Sachs on Section 899: "A provision in the House-passed fiscal package (H.R. 1), would create a new Section 899 of the tax code, which would raise the US tax on many forms of passive income and active business income by 5pp next year, 20pp over four years and, in some cases, as much as 50pp over the next decade. The policy would only apply to entities based in or owned by countries that impose 'discriminatory' taxes on US entities, but these countries are responsible for the majority of foreign investment in the US. These policies could negatively impact holders of US assets, but rather than an intentional effort to discourage demand for US assets to weaken the dollar, the intent of this policy is to pressure other countries to rescind taxes on US multinationals. In fact, most foreign holders of US debt instruments would be exempt from increased tax withholding on interest under the provision, and taxation of capital gains on US equities would not change," per Jan Hatzius et al.

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