Circle Attracts Issuers Filing ETFs After Successful IPO

At least three exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuers filed ETFs related to Circle Internet Group (CRCL) in the days after the stablecoin issuer’s Thursday (June 5) initial public offering (IPO).

These filings reached the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday (June 6) and Monday (June 9), Bloomberg reported Tuesday (June 10). They included the Bitwise CRCL Option Income Strategy ETF, ProShares Ultra CRCL ETF and T-Rex 2x Long CRCL Daily Target ETF, with Rex Financial’s filing replacing an earlier prospectus.

The ETFs seek to capitalize on the stock performance of Circle, whose shares tripled in value on the day of its IPO, according to the report.

Their filings reflect investors’ growing interest in funds tied to speculative assets, the report said. There are now about 80 ETFs that track an aspect of digital assets.

“It’s an alignment of the stars,” Bloomberg Intelligence ETF Analyst Athanasios Psarofagis said in the report, speaking of the activity around Circle. “It’s a crypto company, so that’s high demand, it’s leveraged and it’s a market hungry for IPOs.”

When Circle debuted on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Thursday under the ticker symbol “CRCL,” its stock surged from the $31 per share at which the IPO was priced, and which was above the expected range, to $83.23 at close.

“Our transformation into being a public company is a significant and powerful milestone — the world is ready to start upgrading and moving to the internet financial system,” Circle Co-Founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said in a Thursday post on X.

Circle’s IPO was one sign of investors putting their dollars to work to help hasten the tech-driven transformation of money movement, PYMNTS reported Friday (June 6).

Other recent funding rounds have touched on everything from infrastructure to B2B to platform-based lending. For example, Circle’s venture investment arm participated in the Series A round of stablecoin-focused cross-border payments platform Conduit, which raised $36 million in new funding.

It was reported Wednesday (June 4) that JPMorgan Chase plans to offer financing to clients using spot bitcoin ETFs as collateral, reflecting the bank’s growing acceptance of regulated crypto exposure in mainstream finance.