Jeremy Allaire

**David Rubenstein** (0:02)
One of the most successful IPOs in 2025 was the IPO of Circle, a regulated stablecoin network. The company was the brainchild of Jeremy Allaire. I recently had a chance to sit down with Jeremy Allaire to talk about what a regulated stablecoin network is and why it's the future of banking. The company is now has a market capitalization today of about, what, 20 some billion?

**Jeremy Allaire** (0:24)
Around there, yeah.

**David Rubenstein** (0:25)
$20 billion, that's pretty good. And you own about 10% of the company?

**Jeremy Allaire** (0:28)
Close to that, yeah.

**David Rubenstein** (0:29)
So, you're a happy guy?

**Jeremy Allaire** (0:33)
I've been building the company for 12.5 years. It's been a very long journey to build it, and a company that very few people believe could achieve what it has. So, I feel great about what we've been able to build. What I would say though, and it relates to the IPO as well, is what's motivating to me is that we're actually an early-stage company. This is super early in terms of what we envision being possible and what we can build. So, while the numbers or this or that are interesting or compelling for different reasons, what's exciting to me is that by becoming a publicly held institution, the general public can participate in how we build this company over the long run, and the law that even made what we do kind of enshrined in federal law and part of the global financial system just passed, and it's not even in effect. So, we're in the early days of this, and so that's really motivating to me is what we can accomplish still.

**David Rubenstein** (1:34)
What year did you start the company?

**Jeremy Allaire** (1:36)
In 2013

**David Rubenstein** (1:37)
And who gave you your initial capital?

**Jeremy Allaire** (1:41)
So, our original investors were General Catalyst, Jim Breyer, and Excel, were the kind of founding investors.

**David Rubenstein** (1:50)
And they made on their money?

**Jeremy Allaire** (1:52)
They did well.

**David Rubenstein** (1:53)
Well, wow, okay. And to get the circle off the ground, it took how much capital? 10 million, 15, 20?

**Jeremy Allaire** (2:02)
Yeah, I mean, in the first couple of years, we raised around 25 million dollars.

**David Rubenstein** (2:08)
And did people know what a stable coin was in those days?

**Jeremy Allaire** (2:10)
Well, there was no such thing as a stable coin then, but when we started the company, what we explained was this new technology, cryptocurrency, blockchains, was going to make it possible to build a way to put dollars on the Internet, in the same way that we have protocols for how information moves around, like the web protocols or email protocols or voice protocols and all these things. There are going to be these new protocols for money on the Internet that will allow very safe forms of dollars to be operated that way. And that was the idea and you couldn't do it in 2013

**David Rubenstein** (2:46)
What is a stable coin and what does Circle actually do with stable coins?

**Jeremy Allaire** (2:50)
We now have a law that defines what a stable coin is in the United States. I'll use that definition.

**David Rubenstein** (2:55)
Okay.

**Jeremy Allaire** (2:55)
A payment stable coin is a digital currency that is issued on the Internet, on a blockchain that is backed completely one for one by high quality, safe, liquid assets. So, US government, treasury bills, and cash. And by issuing it on these networks, it allows these digital dollars to be used on the Internet, just like we can use any form of data and information as well. So, it is a form of digital currency dollars that is fully backed and held. And it's called a stable coin because, of course, historically, cryptocurrencies were not stable and volatile. And that's really where the name came from. And Circle, we operate an Internet platform across a whole range of technologies. But the core franchise is we run the largest regulated stable coin network in the world for handling stable coins and storing and moving them all around the Internet.

**David Rubenstein** (3:58)
Well, why do I need a stable coin? I've been using banks for years. What's wrong with my banks? If I want to send money to Istanbul, I just tell the bank, wire the money. What's wrong with that system?

**Jeremy Allaire** (4:09)
Well, if you talk to anyone who's trying to move money to Istanbul, it actually turns out it's very time consuming, very slow. There's a lot of barriers. There tends to be excessive fees. Sometimes it gets lost. And in fact, Turkey is a great example because in Turkey, there's extraordinary demand for USDC and stable coins right now because in a place like Turkey, people want dollars. They don't want lira. They want digital dollars that they can just use from their mobile phones that they can just like you can make up a peer-to-peer phone call with someone. It doesn't cost you anything. People and businesses have figured out in Turkey, just as one example, that they can transact with each other directly without an intermediary instantly with virtually no cost. And so it's it's actually becoming a substitute for banking. And in fact, the nice thing about stable coins, especially well-regulated, well-run stable coins, is they're very safe because they don't actually lend the money or take risk with the money. They just are holding it in these ultra safe instruments. So holders of these are saying, wow, this is a super safe digital dollar that I can use, just like I can use WhatsApp or use like the Internet as a whole.