Circle is a peer-to-peer payments engineering company. It was founded by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in October 2013. Circle ‘s mobile payment platform, Circle Pay, allows users to hold, send, and experience traditional decree currencies. [ 1 ] In September 2015, Circle received the inaugural BitLicense write out from the New York State Department of Financial Services. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] In April 2016, the british government approved the first virtual currency licensure to Circle. [ 5 ] Circle is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. [ 6 ] astir until December 2016, Circle Pay besides operated as a Bitcoin wallet service to buy and sell Bitcoins. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ] It has since ceased to provide such serve, claiming the company “ is now more than ever not a consumer bitcoin commute, and will continue to focus resources on global sociable payments and future next-generation blockchain engineering “. [ 10 ] In February 2020, Circle sold its digital asset trade platform to Voyager Digital. [ 11 ]
Reading: Circle (company) – Wikipedia
In July 2021, Circle announced a plan to merge with a special-purpose skill caller called Concord Acquisition Corp. to go public, a distribute that values the company at $ 9 billion. [ 12 ] encircle is the issuer of the USDC stablecoin. [ 13 ]
Funding [edit ]
The caller has received over US $ 135 million in venture capital from 4 rounds of investments from 2013 to 2016, including US $ 50 million led by Goldman Sachs. [ 14 ] [ 15 ] [ 16 ] In April 2015 The New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper wrote that the Goldman Sachs investing “ should help solidify Bitcoin ’ randomness repute as a technology that serious fiscal firms can work with. ” [ 17 ] In June 2016, Circle raised US $ 60 million in Series D fund backed by newly and existing partners. [ 18 ] On May 15, 2018, Circle raised US $ 110 million in speculation capital to create USD Coin, an Ethereum mint they claim is backed by USD. [ 19 ] [ 20 ]
Services and features [edit ]
As of 2015 a Circle bill can be funded in USD via “ US-issued Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards ”, US bank accounts. [ 21 ] As of 2016, european customers can besides use Circle in EUR and GBP. [ 22 ] Circle plans to peg the conversion rate to the US Dollar. [ 23 ] [ 20 ] Britain ‘s Financial Conduct Authority granted Circle an electronic money license in April 2016, expanding the use of Circle ‘s services to the United Kingdom and broadening Circle ‘s relationship with UK deposit Barclays. [ 24 ] In June 2016, Circle announced it will begin expanding its services to China, where CEO Jeremy Allaire believes “ there ’ s an opportunity for chinese consumers that want to share respect globally with friends in other parts of the world. ” [ 25 ] In December 2016 the Circle app stopped supporting the exchange of bitcoin but inactive allows money transfers. [ 26 ] In October 2017, Circle launched a raw service for group payments and cash transfers to US accounts. [ 27 ] [ 28 ] In June 2019 it was announced that the Circle Pay mobile and web apps would be discontinued on September 30. [ 29 ]
Acquisitions [edit ]
On February 26, 2018, Circle announced that they purchased Poloniex Cryptocurrency commute for $ 400 million. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] Amid the developments around the learning, one of Circle ‘s leak documents detailing its plans on operate Poloniex revealed the party ‘s moves to become “ The US ‘s First Regulated Crypto Exchange ” supported by its reciprocal understanding with the SEC.
While Circle announced the commute would “ spin out ” in October 2019, [ 32 ] it was revealed one month subsequently that Justin Sun, founder of Tron, led the acquisition of Poloniex. [ 33 ] In October 2018 SeedInvest announced they entered an agreement to sell to Circle, subject to FINRA ( Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ) blessing. [ 34 ]
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