Circle Internet Stock Skyrockets Today: Here’s Why

Another day, another crypto-adjacent stock making Wall Street sweat.

Circle Internet Financial—the stablecoin giant lurking behind USDC—just saw its shares surge like a degenerate's leverage position. No fancy earnings report or product launch triggered this rally. Just good old-fashioned market chaos working in favor of the digital asset infrastructure play.

The Catalyst: Liquidity Tsunami

Traders piled into Circle after whispers of institutional USDC adoption hit terminal screens. Never mind that stablecoins were invented to avoid traditional finance—now BlackRock’s algo wants a piece.

The Aftermath: Paper Gains Galore

Circle’s stock chart now looks like a crypto Twitter influencer’s follower count during a bull run. Straight up. Whether this holds longer than a meme coin’s hype cycle? That’ll depend on how fast the suits realize they’re betting on blockchain’s most boring use case.

Final thought: Nothing makes TradFi embrace crypto faster than the chance to skim fees off volatility they’ll never understand.

Image source: Getty Images.

Circle Internet Q2

Circle says the entirety of its loss came about from "IPO-related non cash charges" of $591 million. But for those charges, the company's $482 million loss would have been something more like a $109 million profit. And on $658 million in total revenue -- up 53% year over year -- that would have been pretty impressive.

Circle says it plans to drive further growth through its "innovative platform" Circle Payments Network, which will permit financial institutions to use stablecoins for payments.

Is Circle stock a buy?

Circle chose some curious metrics to give investors by way of "guidance" for the rest of this year, predicting 40% "multi-year" growth in USDC stablecoins in circulation, saying it expects to generate between $75 million and $85 million in "other revenue" (without saying what revenue from its Core operations will be), and introducing the concept of "revenue less distribution costs margin," which will range from 36% to 38%.

It also said "adjusted operating expenses" will run as high as $490 million this year.

I'm honestly not sure what all of this might translate into in terms of annual revenue, but it sounds pretty certain to me that Circle will lose money this year. This likelihood, combined with the newness of the IPO, tells me investors are probably safest staying away from this IPO for now.