Circle has authorization to market its USDC stablecoin services across Europe under the bloc’s MiCA laws. 

Stablecoin issuer Circle is the first stablecoin company to achieve compliance with the European Union’s (EU) Markets in Crypto Asset (MiCA) policies designed to oversee digital asset business operations. 
Having obtained an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from French regulators, CEO Jeremy Allaire said Circle Mint France will manage EURC and USDC issuance for European users. 

Stablecoins offer an avenue to trade in and out of cryptocurrencies without suffering from the volatility associated with most digital assets, such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL). Assets like Tether’s USDT and USDC are pegged to a sovereign currency, like the U.S. dollar or the euro. 

The development dispelled previous uncertainty surrounding stablecoins in the EU, as MiCA promised to install strict rules on how these assets may be used. For instance, under the bloc’s framework, firms have a daily issuance limit of $215 million in transaction value. 

Is Circle positioned to upend Tether?

Circle’s EMI license and MiCA compliance could prove strategic in claiming European market change and even challenging crypto’s largest stablecoin issuer, Tether. 

Speculation circulated about Tether’s European future after some platforms, like Bitstamp, delisted the firm’s euro-denominated offering, Tether EURT. Uphold also shuttered support for USDT and several other dollar-pegged stabelcoins. 

With a vacuum emerging and Circle claiming the first MiCA stablecoin license, Allaire and his company could flip Tether and USDT as the dominant stablecoin in multiple jurisdictions. The USDC issuer plans to redomicile its legal base from Ireland to the U.S. before an initial public offering (IPO). Looming U.S. stablecoin regulations might further solidify the company as a global stablecoin powerhouse. 

Still, USDC has an uphill road before catching up to Tether in market cap. USDT holds the number one spot with $113 billion to USDC’s $32 billion. At press time, USDC is below its June 2022 peak of around $55 billion. 

Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire thinks additional regulatory clarity will pave the way for increased stablecoin adoption in 2024.

In a new interview with CNBC International TV, Allaire predicts that the recent approval of spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US will act as “the tide that lifts all boats” in the crypto sector.

The Circle CEO notes stablecoins remained resilient throughout the crypto space’s turbulence over the past few years.

“What I can say about stablecoins and what we’ve seen in the market is really a lot of people were paying attention to a lot of the scandals in this industry, and failures and bankruptcies, but at the same time, we were seeing tremendous progress being made in continued technology development.

And this is a little bit like after the dot com boom and bust – people ignored consumer internet e-commerce, but actually the technology continued to develop, and so we saw that happen last year, and we’ve seen stablecoins in particular remain the killer app of blockchain technology and start to see widening usage all around the world.”

Circle issues USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market cap. Last week, the company announced that it submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of its equity securities.

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USDC issuer Circle wants to become a publicly traded company in the US.

The stablecoin company says in a new announcement that it submitted a draft registration statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of its equity securities.

Circle notes that it has not determined the number of shares it plans to offer or the price range for those shares. The company says the IPO is expected to happen after the SEC completes its review process.

USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market cap, aims to maintain a 1:1 peg with the US dollar. The digital asset completed a new upgrade on Thursday that is designed to reduce gas costs, improve support for account abstraction, and bolster security for transactions on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchains.

Circle and Coinbase co-created USDC in 2018 and jointly managed the asset through the Centre Consortium until last year.

In August, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire announced that his company would bring all of USDC’s governance and operations responsibilities in-house to streamline management of the stablecoin.

Coinbase said at the time that it would purchase an equity stake in Circle. The top US crypto exchange became a public company in April 2021.

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