Tomorrow, Circle employees and ex-employees finish lockup. The stock has gone from $31 to ~$300 and back to $85 since the June IPO. To me, this is an exemplary study in successful IPO vs not. The stakeholders are: - The company - Employees (and former ones) - Long Term Investors & VCs - IPO investors - Bankers - Post-IPO retail The stunning winners: Clearly the IPO investors, and the bankers who gate access. Not only would the bankers have taken home probably $50-100M in fees, they also fuel future business via AUM fees for private clients by giving access to a banger 10X in months. Neutral: The employees (or former ones like yours truly), I would say are net-neutral, as by the time lockup finishes the price is back to its natural level. Banger IPO with constrained supply or not, when lockup finishes, it’s probably the process it should be. The same for long-term investors. The losers: The company, which could have taken in a lot more capital. The price is a high one to pay for planting the name in the minds of retail. Retail also probably mostly lost. Whenever you have such volatility, most retail comes in late to bid up, and the smart money dumps on them. —- What next? The chances of Circle ever reaching previous highs are thin (as much as I love them). The history of banger IPOs are not good, here is a quick list of companies which went to huge highs in the months after IPO and never reached those highs ever again. - Airbnb - Coinbase - Rivian - Lyft - Bumble - UiPath - Snowflake - Cisco - Intel - many more… Even RobinHood only recently retook highs. So what happens to Circle’s stock price? Honestly, by pure earnings, it should fall. Falling interest rates are worse short term, than the USDC growth they fuel. But the company, being the issuer of the second largest stablecoin, and the third one being ~90% smaller, has a special valuation for M&A appeal. Thus, my bet is the stock goes up in 2026. But… The chances of Circle ending 2026 independent, might be 50/50. Coinbase, RobinHood, a bank with scale like JPM, or Visa/Mastercard (which have 20x the scale by Market Cap) are all likely suitors. The big tech companies could also come for them. Get the 🍿 ready.