Circle raises another $110M in round led by Bitmain, pushing its valuation up to almost $3B, says it's launching USD Coin, a new product tied to US dollar value
Dan Frommer / Recode :
Context & Ripple Effects
Circle's funding arc has been climbing steadily: after its $60M series D from IDG and Baidu in 2016 amid a China expansion push, the company is now pulling in $110M from Bitmain — a Beijing-based mining-rig maker whose machine sales have generated billions — at a valuation approaching $3B. The round comes with a product announcement: USD Coin, a token pegged to the US dollar.
That product ships four months later as the USDC launch to partner institutions, and the capital keeps following — a reported further raise attempt in 2019 while Circle also runs the Poloniex exchange, then a $440M round in 2021 ahead of a potential SPAC, and finally a US IPO targeting roughly $5.65B. This 2018 round is where the stablecoin business and the mining-money investor first converge.
First-order effects
- Bitmain converts mining-hardware profits into an equity stake in a dollar-stablecoin issuer at a near-$3B valuation, giving it exposure to the settlement layer rather than just the mining layer.
- Circle gains $110M specifically earmarked around building and launching USD Coin, moving it from blockchain payments generalist into stablecoin issuance.
Second-order effects
- A hardware vendor leading a stablecoin round signals that mining-economics players see dollar-pegged tokens as a demand channel for their own ecosystem, pulling equipment makers deeper into financial infrastructure.
- The near-$3B mark set here becomes the reference point for Circle's subsequent raises — including the 2019 effort to add another $250M on top of the $246M already banked.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, stablecoin issuers graduate from venture rounds through SPAC attempts to full public listings — the path Circle actually walks from this round to its 2025 IPO filing.
- Crypto's capital structure stratifies by layer: chip and rig manufacturers fund the monetary rails their machines transact on, concentrating influence over both supply-side hardware and settlement-side tokens in a few named firms.
The trend: Stablecoin issuers are evolving from venture-backed startups into publicly listed financial infrastructure, with crypto-mining capital seeding the earliest rounds.