Circle is performing better than the expectations on Wall Street, with its numbers getting harder to ignore. The crypto firm launched on the New York Stock Exchange 17 days ago with an initial market cap of around $6.8 billion. By June 23, its share price had increased to $299, taking its valuation to $72 billion before dropping back to $64 billion.
Circle’s IPO was loaded with demand to the extent that it was 25 times oversubscribed. That interest level is unheard of in 2025, especially for a company tied so tightly to crypto. Investors didn’t just buy in — they chased the stock to a level that now has traditional finance guys like Jimmy Cramer calling it dangerous. After its valuation hit $10, Cramer told the market that “Circle is too hot,” and now, it is three times that size with no plans of cooling.
Circle sees massive growth, dwarfs fintech rivals
One thing that made Circle’s run so spectacular was how quickly it happened. Most crypto-linked IPOs take time before they hit these numbers. Coinbase got to $78 billion and Robinhood reached $68 billion, but it took both of them far longer. Circle bulldozed its way to $70 billion in just 17 days. It didn’t SPAC its way there or trickle up through public hype. It jumped the fence, and now everyone’s looking around, asking what just happened.
The company’s rise has been compared to past IPOs, but even those don’t match. Circle’s 168% gain on its first trading day puts it in the same class as Beyond Meat’s 163% pop in 2019, though it still trails the 606% jump seen with TheGlobe.com back in 1998 and the 698% explosion of VA Linux in 1999. But those were from a different time, the dot-com bubble days, when any stock with “.com” in the name had a potential for a jump.
Even Snowflake matched Circle’s current valuation on day one. But see, this isn’t just about size, it’s about speed, and the fact that Circle operates in crypto, a sector still crawling out from under layers of skepticism, regulation, and very recent disasters. Critics say the company mispriced the IPO, and instead of capturing the real value for itself, it handed it over to Wall Street. And now that investors have seen the aftermath, the conversation has shifted to whether Circle’s valuation can hold or if a correction is coming fast.
Meanwhile, the market was dealing with another thing entirely, the open conflict between Israel, Iran, and the United States as a mediator. On Monday, the Dow gained 374.96 points, closing at 42,581.78. The S&P 500 went up 0.96% to end at 6,025.17, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.94% to 19,630.97. Stocks rose after fears over an escalation faded. Iran’s military confirmed it fired missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, a US military hub housing roughly 10,000 troops, in retaliation for US strikes on nuclear sites in Fordo, Isfahan, and Natanz over the weekend. But Qatari defense systems intercepted the missiles, and there were no casualties.