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Stablecoin Giant Circle Files IPO on NYSE at $6.7 Billion Valuation

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In brief

  • Stablecoin giant Circle plans to go public via the NYSE, targeting a $6.7 billion valuation.
  • The USDC issuer seeks to raise up to $624 million by offering 24 million shares priced between $24 and $26 apiece.

Stablecoin issuer Circle is hoping to raise as much as $624 million for its much anticipated initial public offering. 

The crypto giant—which is behind USD Coin (USDC), the seventh-biggest digital asset in existence—filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday saying it would offer 24 million shares for $24 to $26 each. The firm is targeting a $6.7 billion fully diluted valuation.

Circle filed an S-1 form last month announcing its plans to go public—the latest company making moves to bring the fast-moving and sometimes convoluted world of crypto to the mainstream. 



And it has big backers: Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment said it has interest in buying up to $150 million of shares in the IPO, the filing says.

Circle is expected to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL.

Circle’s crypto product, USDC, is one of the most important digital assets out there: Traders use stablecoins to enter and exit transactions; the digital tokens are considered the backbone of the crypto economy.

A total of $6.8 billion worth of USDC tokens have traded hands in the past day, CoinGecko data shows, making it the fourth-largest cryptocurrency in terms of volume. USDC’s market cap is currently valued at $61.5 billion.

USDC was launched by Circle and America’s biggest crypto exchange Coinbase in 2018 via the Centre Consortium. Coinbase, which went public in 2021, took an equity stake in Circle in August 2023 amid the dissolution of the consortium.

Circle tried to go public in 2022 via a SPAC, but scrapped the plans. Last year, rumors circulated that the firm would try again.

Amid IPO plans, Circle has reported been the target of acquisition attempts. In April, Bloomberg reported that crypto payments giant Ripple made a $4-5 billion offer for Circle, but was rebuffed due to the offer being too low.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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Shaurya Malwa
Crypto Trends

Alpaca Finance, Leveraged Yield Giant on BNB Chain, Will Shut Down

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Shaurya is the Co-Leader of the CoinDesk tokens and data team in Asia with a focus on crypto derivatives, DeFi, market microstructure, and protocol analysis.

Shaurya holds over $1,000 in BTC, ETH, SOL, AVAX, SUSHI, CRV, NEAR, YFI, YFII, SHIB, DOGE, USDT, USDC, BNB, MANA, MLN, LINK, XMR, ALGO, VET, CAKE, AAVE, COMP, ROOK, TRX, SNX, RUNE, FTM, ZIL, KSM, ENJ, CKB, JOE, GHST, PERP, BTRFLY, OHM, BANANA, ROME, BURGER, SPIRIT, and ORCA.

He provides over $1,000 to liquidity pools on Compound, Curve, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, BurgerSwap, Orca, AnySwap, SpiritSwap, Rook Protocol, Yearn Finance, Synthetix, Harvest, Redacted Cartel, OlympusDAO, Rome, Trader Joe, and SUN.



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A Helldiver from Helldivers 2 seeing the ruination of Super Earth in the visor of their helmet.
Product Reviews

Helldivers 2 player embraces their inner Lisan al-Gaib, discovering a way to surf on the back of the game’s giant floating Leviathans: ‘I spent longer than I would like to admit setting this up’

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Helldivers 2’s most recent update has put Super Earth in big trouble. A massive Illuminate invasion scythed straight through the outer planets belonging to humanity, striking right at the Heart of Democracy. Illuminate thralls stalk the streets while vast floating Leviathan creatures bombard brave Helldivers from below.

In these dark times, Super Earth looks for a hero, one who will unite humanity in a shared cause and liberate Super Earth from the Illuminate menace. Indeed, the Helldivers await their equivalent of Dune’s Lisan al-Gaib. And the good news is, they may just have found them.

Over on r/Helldivers, the aptly named Helldivers 2 player Beautiful-Injury7738 shared a video of themselves riding one of the aforementioned Leviathans. Titled “Leviathan Surfing”, the video depicts Beautiful-Injury standing atop a building, waving the flag of democracy as one of the giant creatures approaches, before using the game’s recently added jetpack to hover over and land on the Leviathan’s back.


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Leviathan Surfing from r/Helldivers

To be clear, you’re not really supposed to do this, but Helldivers 2’s commitment to mechanical consistency (and general disregard for Helldiver safety) means that you can. “I spent longer than I would like to admit setting this up”, admits Beautiful-Injury. The video doesn’t show the setup for the ride. But it’s clear that Beautiful-Injury used the jetpack to summit one of the newly added skyscrapers that cover the surface of Super Earth. The trick appears to be finding a structure that is climbable while also being the appropriate height to safely land on the Leviathan’s back.

From there, it’s a simple case of hanging on, which Beautiful-Injury manages for a full two minutes. This is trickier than it might sound, as while Leviathans don’t actively try to throw you off, they do undulate while flying, making it easy to slide off and plummet to your death.

On Reddit, the video immediately drew comparisons to the sandworm-riding scene from last year’s Dune: Part Two, with numerous fellow redditors declaring Beautiful-Injury to be Helldivers 2’s very own Lisan al-Gaib.

Sadly, our hero and saviour wasn’t around for much longer. As the Leviathan drifted out of the combat zone, Beautiful-Injury was targeted by the anti-desertion artillery that prevents Helldivers from straying beyond the map, and ultimately blown to smithereens by the very people he was destined to lead. Honestly, you couldn’t ask for a more fitting ending, and it’s exactly what would have happened to Timothee Chalamet had Dune: Part Two been directed by Joel.

Meanwhile, the battle rumbles on. Harvey dropped in to do his part for Super Earth a few days ago, and had a blast causing millions in property damage while attending a few ad-hoc Illuminate raves. The broader HD2 community, meanwhile, has fallen head over heels for the new NPC SEAF troops. And I don’t mean they’ve had their feet blown off by Illuminate ordnance.



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The FTC has dropped its lawsuit against Microsoft following the Activision Blizzard acquisition, letting the tech giant loose
Game Reviews

The FTC has dropped its lawsuit against Microsoft following the Activision Blizzard acquisition, letting the tech giant loose

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The FTC has officially dropped its legal case against Microsoft following the American tech giant’s aquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023. Microsoft is now free from scrutiny, and can now proceed with all manner of business shenanigans with Activision Blizzard in tow without worrying about the courts.

This legal battle, which has been raging for roughly the past two years, concluded as the FTC filed an order to dismiss its case. This comes now as the FTC recently had its appeal for an injunction on the aquisition declined, meaning in simple terms the FTC didn’t really have any more cards left to play.

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Brad Smith, Microsoft Vice Chair, responded to the announcement gleefully in social media, posting: “Today’s decision is a victory for players across the country and for common sense in Washington, D.C. We are grateful to the FTC for today’s announcement.”

The FTC, in its filing to withdraw from this legal battle, conceeding the clash with the following statement: “The Commission has determined that the public interest is best served by dismissing the administrative litigation in this case. Accordingly, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Complaint in this matter be, and it hereby is, DISMISSED.”

So that’s that. The end of a saga of great legal consequence for the video game industry. Now, Microsoft is free to spread the wings it has recently bought and strapped on, and fly out in pursuit of large sums of money unimpeded. Whether or not the FTC’s fears were well placed, and Microsoft will start leaning on the large market share it now has, is something video game fans will have to keep an eye out for.

How do you feel about this conclusion? Happy, or bummed out? Let us know below!



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Krisztian Sandor
Crypto Trends

Private Equity Giant Apollo Global Private Credit Fund Set for Tokenization on Solana (SOL)

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A tokenized version of a major private credit fund managed by Apollo will arrive on Solana’s

decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, bringing traditional financial instruments closer to the fast-growing network.

The launch, orchestrated by lending platform Kamino Finance with support from tokenization specialist Securitize and DeFi risk advisor Steakhouse Financial, aims to make the Apollo’s Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED) token the first of its kind to be available for on-chain borrowing and leverage on Solana. The token’s debut is pending on completing an audit, Kamino said.

The ACRED token, launched in January, offers exposure to Apollo’s private credit strategies and is issued under Securitize’s regulated token framework. ACRED will also be the first token on Solana using Securitize’s sToken standard, with more assets expected to follow later, Securitize said.

The product underscores a growing appetite in crypto for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. RWAs—traditional instruments such as funds, bonds or real estate—are being brought onto blockchain rails to reduce friction in investing, improve access and transparency, and allow for programmable use in DeFi protocols. In practice, this means investors can use RWAs as collateral to borrow against, yield farming, or plug into automated investment strategies.

“The value of tokenization really comes into play when these assets are integrated into DeFi, and new products and strategies are developed around them,” says Reid Simon, head of DeFi and credit solutions at Securitize.

Despite Solana’s fast-growing DeFi market, RWAs are yet to take off on the chain. According to RWA.xyz, Solana hosts $330 million worth of RWAs, small compared to the network’s nearly $9 billion DeFi market size. It’s also trailing rival layer-1 network Ethereum’s $7 billion real-world asset market. But with large players in tokenization stepping in, backers of the launch see this as a tipping point.

“Solana has experienced explosive consumer growth in recent years, but below the surface we are seeing enormous interest from institutions and asset issuers,” said Marius Ciubotariu, co-founder at Kamino, “Finally, the industry is in a position to not only bring these assets on-chain, but to provide genuine use-cases.”

Through Kamino’s Multiply product, users will be able to leverage ACRED for yield strategies—automatically looping the asset to increase exposure while managing collateral and borrow levels through Solana-native smart contracts. That’s a similar offering to what Gauntlet introduced on Polygon in late April.

“Building on off-chain credit assets in a composable way is the sort of long-term investment we believe can help catalyze further growth of DeFi in Solana,” said adcv, co-founder of Steakhouse Financial.



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The ASUS ProArt A16 laptop gets you the latest from AMD and a giant screen
Product Reviews

The ASUS ProArt A16 laptop gets you the latest from AMD and a giant screen

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ASUS is updating both its ProArt laptop and its Chromebooks with the latest internals for Computex 2025, and giving both families of laptops a more premium look, with new colors and tasteful finishes.

The ASUS ProArt A16 stands out as the most premium pick, with a black aluminum body, “stealth” hinge that bring the top half of the laptop nearly flush with the bottom and a smudge-resistant finish that should hopefully avoid fingerprints. Inside, ASUS is offering an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX processor and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU, both of which qualify the new ProArt as a Copilot+ PC. That means you’ll get access to Windows’ growing list of AI features, and ASUS is also including to apps — StoryCube and MuseTree — that can run generative AI models entirely locally. All packed into a laptop that’s around half-an-inch thick and has a 16-inch 4K OLED.

Asus

In terms of Chromebooks, ASUS is offering both normal models and Chromebook Plus versions that support Google’s AI tools. The ASUS Chromebook Plus CX34 has a 14-inch display that can fold flat and a 1080p webcam, alongside up to an Intel Core i5 and 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM. That’s enough to offer Gemini features locally, and you’ll get priority access to Gemini Advanced. The only real disadvantage is the giant ASUS logo that still looks awkward next to the similarly prominent Chromebook logo, and the limited color options: You can only pick between white or grey.

Asus

The ASUS Chromebook CX14 and CX15 come with up to an Intel Core N355 processor, put to 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to 256GB of storage. If you’re curious about Google’s AI features, you can also purchase a Plus version of the CX14. Whether you get the 14-inch or 15-inch model, both come with a respectable selection of ports, including HDMI for connecting to external displays. Either size also gets a variety of color options: blue, and a sliver-y grey or a greenish-grey in a either a matte or textured finish.

Asus

The ASUS Chromebook CX34 is available now starting at $400 from both Walmart and Best Buy. Meanwhile, the rest of the above laptops won’t be available until Q2 2025. The ProArt A16 starts at $2,500 from ASUS’ online store and Best Buy. The Chromebook CX14 starts at $279 from Best Buy or Costco. The Chromebook Plus CX14 will be available for $429 from Best Buy. And finally the Chromebook CX15 starts at $220 and will be able to be purchased from Best Buy and Amazon.



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