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Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, speaks at the 2025 TIME100 Summit in New York on April 23, 2025.

Jemal Countess | TIME | Getty Images

Stablecoin issuer Circle stands to be one of the first significant cryptocurrency companies to go public in the U.S. That’s not the only unusual aspect of its IPO.

In Circle’s updated prospectus on Tuesday, the company said it would sell 9.6 million shares in the offering, while existing shareholders would sell 14.4 million shares. It’s exceedingly rare in a tech IPO for more shares to come from investors than the company.

Facebook was one of the few notable exceptions. In the social network’s massive 2012 IPO, which raised a then-record $16 billion, 57% of the shares were sold by existing stakeholders. Circle is even higher at 60%.

Circle, the company behind the popular USDC stablecoin, didn’t provide a reason for its decision, and a spokesperson declined to comment. The company is profitable, having generated $64.8 million in net income in the latest quarter. It had almost $850 million in cash and equivalents, and stands to raise another $240 million in the IPO, based on the midpoint of its expected range of $24 to $26 a share, according to Tuesday’s filing.

One reason for the hefty amount of insider sales is likely the extended stretch of meager returns for venture capital firms. After the market peaked in 2021, soaring inflation led to increased interest rates, pushing investors out of risk and forcing late-stage tech companies to forego IPOs, often slashing their valuations to raise money in the private market. Wall Street was bullish on an IPO boom when President Donald Trump took office in January, but few debuts have taken place.

Add it all up, and Silicon Valley’s tech investors are badly in need of liquidity.

“Private investors are desperate for exists so they can distribute back to their investors,” said Lise Buyer, founder of IPO consultancy Class V Group, though she said she isn’t certain of the company’s motivations. “It probably reflects a multiyear drought in IPOs and a strong desire by early investors to get some liquidity.”

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Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, who co-founded the company in 2013, is offloading about 8% of his stake, selling 1.58 million shares, according to the prospectus. Sean Neville, a co-founder and former co-CEO, is slated to sell 11%, as is finance chief Jeremy Fox-Green.

Venture firms Accel, Breyer Capital, General Catalyst, IDG Capital, and Oak Investment Partners are all scheduled to sell about 10% of their stock. While insider sales could present a troubling signal to Wall Street, Buyer said the investors’ remaining holdings show they’re still expressing belief in the company.

“The big guys are holding enough so they still have skin in the game, so that shouldn’t alarm investors,” Buyer said.

For most tech IPOs over the years, the percentage of float coming from investors has been significantly below half. In Reddit’s IPO, insiders sold 31% of the shares. The percentage was 36% for online grocery delivery company Instacart in 2023.

Sometimes it’s much less than that. CoreWeave, a former cryptocurrency miner that now rents out Nvidia chips, went public in March, with executives and other shareholders making up 2.4% of the shares sold. Back in December 2020, Airbnb investors accounted for about 3% of IPO shares, and in DoorDash’s IPO that same week, existing investors didn’t sell any stock.

During times when IPOs are hot and stocks are flying after their debut, investors are incentivized to hold and pocket the gains after the lockup period expires. That’s not today’s market, which helps explain why half the shares sold in stock brokerage firm eToro’s IPO earlier this month came from existing investors.

Exit activity for U.S. VCs rose almost 35% last year to $98 billion after hitting the lowest in a decade in 2023, according to the National Venture Capital Association and PitchBook. The peak was over $750 billion in 2021.

“This continuation of the post-2021 liquidity drought highlights persistent issues around exit pathways and investor behavior,” the NVCA wrote in its annual yearbook, which was published in March.

In some cases, companies need insiders to sell stock just so there’s enough float for there to be a market for trading. If Circle wasn’t including investors in its share sale, it would be offering less than 5% of outstanding shares to the public. For eToro that number was 7%.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

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MicroStrategy copycats are getting out of control as Canadian vape company joins fray

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MicroStrategy copycats are getting out of control as Canadian vape company joins fray

The logos of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether outside a cryptocurrency exchange in Istanbul, Turkey, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. 

David Lombeida | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The crypto market’s bullishness may be tipping into speculative frenzy, if the latest MicroStrategy-style copycat is any indication.

On Monday, a little-known Canadian vape company saw its stock surge on plans to enter the crypto treasury game – but this time with Binance Coin (BNB), the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, excluding the dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether (USDT), according to CoinGecko.

Shares of CEA Industries, which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker VAPE, rocketed more than 800% at one point after the company announced its plans. CEA, along with investment firm 10X Capital and YZi Labs, said it would offer a $500 million private placement to raise proceeds to buy Binance Coin for its corporate treasury. Shares ended the session up nearly 550%, giving the company a market cap of about $48 million.

Given the more crypto-friendly regulatory environment this year, more public companies have adopted the MicroStrategy playbook of using debt financing and equity sales to buy bitcoin to hold on their balance sheet to try to increase shareholder returns, pushing bitcoin to new records.

Now, with the S&P 500 trading at new records, the resurgence of meme mania and a pro-crypto White House supporting the crypto industry, investors are looking further out on the risk spectrum of crypto hoping for bigger gains.

In recent months, investors have rotated out of bitcoin and into ether, which led to a burst of companies seeking a similar treasury strategy around ether. SharpLink Gaming, whose board is chaired by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, was one of the first to make the move. Other companies like DeFi Development Corp, renamed from Janover, are making similar moves around Solana.

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Trump Organization says Amazon, Walmart, eBay sellers are hawking knockoff shirts, hats, mugs

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Trump Organization says Amazon, Walmart, eBay sellers are hawking knockoff shirts, hats, mugs

Donald Trump

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The Trump Organization has filed a lawsuit against unnamed online merchants it said are hawking counterfeit merchandise promoting President Donald Trump.

In the suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Florida, the company accused the merchants of selling “inferior imitations” of Trump-branded products on several online marketplaces, including Amazon, Walmart and eBay.

The Trump Organization company, which is owned by Trump, sells a variety of branded merchandise through its website, including a gold T1 smartphone. The Trump Organization alleges the online merchants didn’t license its trademarks and weren’t authorized resellers of genuine merchandise.

“By selling counterfeit products that purport to be genuine and authorized products using the TRUMP trademarks, defendants cause confusion and deception in the marketplace,” the complaint says.

Coffee mugs, hats, t-shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with “Trump,” “Trump 2028,” and American flags were among the examples of alleged knockoffs listed in the suit.

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The Trump Organization intends to file a motion to seal an exhibit listing the merchants’ identities, according to the complaint.

The company is seeking to prevent the merchants from using Trump trademarks. It also asks a judge to compel Amazon and other online marketplaces to destroy the alleged counterfeit goods and close the merchants’ selling accounts.

Representatives from Amazon, Walmart and eBay didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Amazon, Walmart and eBay all operate thriving online marketplaces that allow third-party businesses to list and sell goods. The companies have all battled issues in the past around the sale of inauthentic or unsafe goods on their platforms.

Amazon sellers looked to cash in on Trump’s return to the White House earlier this year.

Sales of Trump-branded merchandise, including calendars, toilet paper and greeting cards, spiked in January, according to e-commerce marketing company Omnisend, which collected its data from seller software provider JungleScout.

In the lead-up to last year’s election, Amazon sellers made $140 million from Trump-related merchandise and $26 million from products promoting presidential candidate and former Vice President Kamala Harris, Omnisend found.

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Firefly Aerospace sets IPO range that would value rocket maker at $5.5 billion

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Firefly Aerospace sets IPO range that would value rocket maker at .5 billion

Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim sits for an interview at the Firefly Aerospace mission operations center in Leander, Texas, on July 9, 2025.

Sergio Flores | Reuters

Firefly Aerospace will price shares at $35 to $39 each in its upcoming initial public offering, a deal that would value the rocket maker at about $5.5 billion.

The Texas-based space company said in an updated prospectus Monday that it’s planning to sell about 16.2 million shares. The offering could raise up to $631.8 million.

Earlier this month, Firefly filed its plans to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “FLY.”

Its debut comes amid a renewed push in the space race, as billionaire-led companies such as Elon Musk‘s SpaceX funnel more money into space activities and startups try their luck at the public markets.

Space tech firm Voyager went public in June, while reusable rocket developer Innovative Rocket Technologies said it plans to debut through a $400 million special purpose acquisition company merger.

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Firefly’s public market launch also coincides with a revival in IPO activity as debilitating interest rates and an overhang from President Donald Trump‘s tariff plans begin to clear. Design software company Figma is slated to go public this week after raising its range.

Firefly makes rockets, space tugs and lunar landers, including satellite launching rockets known as Alpha. At the end of March, the company reported a sixfold jump in revenue from $8.3 million a year ago to $55.9 million.

The company also reported a net loss of about $60.1 million, up from a loss of $52.8 million a year ago, and said its backlog totaled about $1.1 billion.

Some of Firefly’s major backers include AE Industrial Partners, which led an early investing round in the company. Defense contractor Northrop Grumman invested $50 million in the startup this May, and Firefly says it has collaborated with Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and NASA.

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