Circle Internet Financial, behind the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), has announced talks to raise $400 million involving BlackRock, Fidelity Management and Research, Marshall Wace and Fin Capital.
With demand for #USDC growing and use cases in financial services continuing to scale globally, Circle plans additional strategic growth with a $400M funding round announcement and strategic partnership with BlackRock. https://t.co/OjkhYT0f5T
— Circle (@circlepay) April 12, 2022
The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.
BlackRock became a strategic partner of Circle. The agreement involves studying the possibilities of using USDC in the capital market.
Investments will be used to further develop the company’s infrastructure in the face of growing demand for stablecoins and related financial services.
According to CoinGecko, USD Coin has a capitalization of $50.9 billion. In January 2022, USDC supply on the Ethereum blockchain surpassed market leader USDT for the first time.
In addition to Ethereum, Circle supports USDC on the Algorand, Solana, Stellar, Tron, Hedera Hashgraph, Avalanche, and Flow networks. The company also announced the creation of a “global network of stablecoins”.
In July 2021, as part of its entry into the stock market through a reverse merger with Concord Acquisition Corp. The company was valued at $4.5 billion. In February 2022, this figure doubled.
Recall that in August 2021, Circle promised to restructure into a commercial cryptocurrency bank. At the same time, the company and its partner in the Center consortium, the Coinbase exchange, pledged to transfer the stable coin reserves into dollars and US treasury bills.
