🚀 Stablecoin giant Circle makes furious stock market debut

The stablecoin company Circle, known as the issuer of the USDC, made a spectacular IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) last week on June 5.

Under the ticker symbol CRCL, the shares opened at $31 and closed at $82 after a volatile first trading day - a price gain of 167% within 24 hours.

The high demand for the new stock was not a surprise: BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, announced its interest in a 10% stake back in May 28. ARK Investment also said it would participate in the IPO with a $150 million ticket.

As a result of the strong demand, Circle increased the total volume of the IPO to $1.05 billion with a total of 34 million shares.

The stock exchange launch had been in preparation for months, but was postponed in consequence of the trade conflicts and the macroeconomic uncertainties.

The price performance of Circle's IPO clearly shows the institutional trust in the stablecoin sector and the investor interest for it, and that Circle appears to be positioning itself as one of the central players in the new crypto financial order.

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👀 Big Tech is eyeing stablecoins

More and more large tech companies are showing interest in stablecoins. According to a Fortune report from June 6, Apple, Google, Airbnb and X (formerly Twitter) are all looking into making use of digital currencies, notably to reduce transaction fees and improve cross-border payments.

Google has reportedly started testing a few stablecoin payments and is actively investigating how stablecoins can be securely integrated into its payment infrastructure. Airbnb is also negotiating with payment service providers such as Worldpay to bypass credit card providers like Visa and Mastercard and their expensive service fees. X, on the other hand, is planning to integrate stablecoins into its "X Money" payment features.

Stablecoins like USDT or USDC are rapidly gaining in importance: since January 2024, the market capitalization of this sector has risen by 90% to around $249 billion. At the same time, there is a debate in the US about the GENIUS Act, a bill that could prohibit Big Tech from issuing their own stablecoins in the future. If the law is passed, companies such as Apple and Google would have to rely on established providers like Tether and Circle.

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🔧 Structural changes at the Ethereum Foundation

Ethereum is in a phase of profound change. The Ethereum Foundation has set a new structural, financial and technical course to prepare the blockchain for large-scale adoption in the coming months, while at the same time aligning it with a clearer vision.

On June 2, the foundation announced that it has restructured its central development team and reduced the number of employees. The former R&D team is now simply called "Protocol" and will focus on three core objectives in future: Scaling the base layer (L1), expanding the data space for rollups (blob space) and improving the user experience (UX).

Key personnel such as Tim Beiko, Alex Stokes and Barnabé Monnot were assigned to new areas, while some employees had to withdraw from the project completely.

This upheaval is taking place in the context of a major strategic realignment, which also affects personnel management: two new Co-Managing Directors have been appointed, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak. Operational management and the long-term vision of EF will be more clearly separated in future - Vitalik Buterin and the Management Board will focus on strategic guidelines.

At the same time, the Ethereum Foundation is reorganizing the strategy for its treasury. A more structured model was introduced in view of declining reserves due to consistently high operating costs. ETH reserves are now to be partially invested in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to generate returns and strengthen the ecosystem in a targeted manner.

In February, for example, 45,000 ETH were allocated to various protocols such as Aave, Spark and Compound. $2 million worth of GHO stablecoins were lent via Aave. The move marks a deliberate break with EF's previous neutrality strategy, which was specifically avoiding to support individual DeFi applications.

The switch to a more active financial policy has not come without criticism: some community members accuse the Foundation of a lack of transparency and inefficient treasury management, accusations that the EF intends to counter with quarterly financial reports in the future.

While Bitcoin and Solana reached new highs, the ETH price remained well below its all-time high. According to Ethereum investor Ryan Berckmans, this development was a wake-up call for central figures like Vitalik Buterin - and marks the turning point in Ethereum's strategy.

The previous rollup-centric approach of the blockchain is now being replaced by a balanced layer 1/layer 2 strategy. The aim: more synergy between scaling, security and ease of use.

Berckmans is convinced that Ethereum will form the foundation of future on-chain economies, with a long-term ETH price target of $20,000 to $80,00 if the network successfully becomes the supporting infrastructure of the digital world.

Vitalik Buterin himself proposes a radical simplification of the Ethereum protocol, without sacrificing its strengths.

His goal: Ethereum should become as simple and stable as Bitcoin, but remain powerful at the same time.

To do so, he proposes a concrete plan:

• The upcoming Fusaka hard fork is intended to improve layer 2 scaling through higher data availability.
• A new 3-slot finality approach is intended to make the consensus mechanism more efficient and finalize transactions faster.
• The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) could be replaced by the open RISC-V architecture in the long term, for more performance and less complexity.
• Uniform standards such as common erasure codes and serialization structures are intended to simplify development and interoperability in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Buterin's technical roadmap is ambitious and comes up against an ecosystem that demands clarity, efficiency and goal orientation more than ever.

Ethereum is therefore at a crucial turning point. The next 18 months should set the course with a new management structure, a focus on DeFi, technical simplifications and strategic realignment that should take the blockchain to the next level.

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🇪🇺 The EU wants to strengthen digital sovereignty

In July 2025, the EU Parliament will vote on a package of measures regarding digital independence. The aim is to reduce Europe's dependence on US and Asian tech companies. Indeed, over 80% of digital infrastructure currently comes from outside Europe.

Particularly critical: US cloud providers control around 69% of the EU market. Laws such as the "Cloud Act" also allow access to EU data, even outside the USA.

The proposal calls for the development of a "European Digital Public Infrastructure", including semiconductors, AI, cloud and connectivity, as well as bringing strategic systems such as data centers and satellites back under European control.

The EU seems to be increasingly recognizing its digital dependency and wants to take countermeasures. The planned development of its own infrastructure could contribute to Europe's technological resilience in the long term. However, the decisive factor will be whether this will be followed by concrete measures.

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💰 Strategy raises $1 billion to buy more Bitcoin

Strategy has announced a new equity offering to raise nearly $1 billion, earmarked for further BTC purchases and general corporate purposes.

At the current price, the capital could be used to purchase over 9,600 bitcoins - significantly more than the 705 BTC purchased recently. The financing round quadruples the originally planned $250 million and opens up a new path beyond ordinary shares and convertible bonds.

According to VanEck, the current market premium on Strategy's BTC holdings is 112%. Different experts warn that many investors in the company's stock could be paying far too much for their indirect Bitcoin position.

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