USDC stablecoin developer Circle terminates its plan to go public via a SPAC merger with Concord Acquisition Corp., announced in July 2021, by mutual agreement
The firm had announced plans to go public in July of 2021. — Circle, the company behind stablecoin USDC …
Context & Ripple Effects
Circle's path to the public markets has been a two-year arc of rising and falling expectations. It raised $440M in mid-2021 ahead of the SPAC announcement, then told investors in February that the Concord Acquisition Corp. merger now valued it at $9B, double the original $4.5B deal price.
Terminating by mutual agreement leaves the USDC issuer private through the depths of the crypto downturn — though the related reporting shows the company was already weighing a conventional IPO as early as 2024, suggesting the SPAC was a vehicle, not the destination.
First-order effects
- Concord Acquisition Corp.'s shareholders lose the merger entirely, and Circle remains private with no committed timeline or valuation anchor after the $9B figure lapsed with the deal.
Second-order effects
- Other crypto firms that priced SPAC mergers off 2021 valuations face the same repricing math, making a mutual termination or renegotiation the template rather than the exception.
Third-order effects
- If Circle follows through on a traditional IPO, the episode marks crypto's listing strategy rotating from SPAC shortcuts back to conventional offerings under fuller disclosure scrutiny.
The trend: Crypto companies are abandoning 2021-vintage SPAC deals as their valuations reset, with conventional IPOs re-emerging as the preferred route to public markets.