Your First Captivating Topic of the Week

📈 Circle’s IPO Filing and Hashnote Acquisition Details

On Monday we covered how major banks are considering a joint stablecoin to keep their turf and now it’s time to cover the fintechs. Just yesterday it was reported that Circle, the company behind the infamous USDC stablecoin, has filed for their IPO on NYSE.

The breakdown

• Ticker: CRCL

• 24 million class A shares

  • 9.6 million from Circle

  • 14.4 million being sold by stakeholders

• Estimated Price: $24-26

• Lead book runners: J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs

And who might be some of those stakeholders? 

Hashnote! If you recall, Circle acquired Hashnote for their USYC product earlier this year but there weren’t too many details. This filing now shows that it was $9.9 million in cash and about 2.9 million fully-vested Circle shares. Congrats again to Leo Mizuhara and team!

Another interesting thing to note according to the article is that Cathie Wood’s ARK expressed interest in buying up $150M worth! Why? Two reasons are likely: naturally portfolio diversification and the other is the infrastructure itself considering she’s keen on tokenizing their funds and blockchain as a whole.

With that in mind, is there still a chance someone acquires Circle before the IPO? 

Ripple and Coinbase were the likely acquirers, with Ripple having made a rejected $5B offer. According to this article, “A company spokesperson stated to PYMTS, ‘Circle is not for sale. Our long-term goals remain the same.’”

With a widely-used stablecoin in payments, a yieldcoin being used as collateral, and now raising through an IPO, Circle is positioning itself to double down in creating infrastructure for onchain finance at both retail and institutional levels. How will the banks be impacted? Let us know on X spaces!

This is not financial advice.

Monday’s Onchain: Weekly X Spaces

 Join us on Monday’s Onchain to talk about
📰 Tokenization News
🚀 New RWAs
⭐️ Featured Guests and more!

Set your reminder and see you there!

Your Second Captivating Topic of the Week

⚓️ Guatemala’s Interoceanic Corridor Anchors to Blockchain

Central America’s collaborating more in digital assets with El Salvador helping Guatemala in their issuance of a new equity token: the COINGT token which is tied to the Interoceanic Corridor of Guatemala.

Regulated by El Salvador’s CNAD, Ditobanx and Trokera are helping bring this $325M issuance to local and international investors. From a tech perspective, however, Tokeny was recently tapped in and this comes just a week after the big Apex acquisition news - great to see they’re not taking their foot off the gas!

What’s the purpose? 

They’re building infrastructure to streamline trade, logistics, and opportunity across Central America. Farmers and land owners signed off in exchange for their own equity tokens and now Guatemala is connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through a modern railway network.

Here are the 4 parts to it:

1. Port Infrastructure

2. Double-Track Railway

3. Pipeline System for Hydrocarbons

4. Industrial, Commercial, and Service Zones

This effort is leveraging tokenization for investment into the project which will help create both social and economic impact through new jobs, locals and international investors gaining exposure to the upside, sustainability, and of course the growth of Guatemala in global trade.

Equity issuance is likely just the beginning considering these different parts to it. Blockchain and its transparency can be used for payments, reduced corruption, any associated carbon credits, governance, and more. If this is successful it can likely spark other ideas like tokenized receivables in the region so let’s keep an eye on it!

This is not financial advice.

Companies of the Week

Company of the Week - Kyle: Kraken

Find out why and more every Friday live around 12pm EST on LinkedIn or X/ Twitter. Past episodes available on Youtube or your favorite podcast platform! 

RWA Foundation & WALLY DAO

The WALLY DAO website is officially live!

Reports

RWA Tokenization: Key Trends and 2025 Market Outlook

Check out a report we contributed to: RWA Tokenization: Key Trends and 2025 Market Outlook. Led by Brickken, this report brings multiple parties together in diving into tokenization, with STM.co supporting with both data and some of the written sections.

What’s Inside?

✅ A Breakdown of Tokenization and Related Benefits
✅ Key advantages for issuers, investors, and institutions
✅ How the market is evolving and trends shaping adoption in 2025
✅ What’s next? Expert insights on regulation, DeFi integration, institutional involvement, and market growth

STM’s RWA Market Prediction for 2030

STM.co is proud to release a thorough report on our prediction on the tokenized real world asset market growth. This report explores the variety of opportunities within each asset class to capture value on-chain.

Tokenization can be applied to just about any object and asset type. Art, carbon credits, life insurance, and other sub $5 trillion asset classes weren’t even considered in estimates.

In order for STM.co to derive its 2030 market predictions, the following asset classes were evaluated: currency, M2/M3, real estate, commodities, public equities, private companies and funds, bonds, credit and lending markets.

State of the Tokenization Industry 2024 Report

We are very excited to publish our State of the Tokenization Industry 2024 report with our sponsor SteelWave Digital! The STM.co team covers this year’s headlines and key takeaways, sorted into the following categories:

Search away, share it with a colleague, and revisit the same link for future updates!

This is not financial or investment advice.