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Circle drops after 10 million share offering with top shareholders and CEO reducing their positions

Stablecoin giant Circle announced a secondary stock sale of 10 million shares. The company will offer 10 million shares of its Class A common stock, with selling stockholders offering 8 million of those shares, according to a press release. Underwriters have an option to purchase an additional 1.5 million shares.

The stock was down 2% in premarket trading.  

The majority of the offering is effectively a liquidity event for some of Circle’s largest holders and insiders. Assuming the underwriters’ option is not exercised, IDG Capital will sell 1.17 million, General Catalyst will unload 1.12 million, and Fidelity’s position will be down by about 750,000 shares. Private equity firms Oak Investment Partners and Accel are also owners of 5% of the company and are reducing their exposure in this offering, while CEO and Chairman Jeremy Allaire is selling 357,812 shares.

Circle’s lockup period is poised to expire on either the second trading day following the release of earnings for the quarter ending September 30, 2025 (i.e., about three months from now) or 180 days after its initial public offering — whichever comes first. This secondary offering allows some important shareholders to book gains after the stock’s hot post-IPO run.

Circle expects to raise $309.4 million to $542.6 million from this offering, depending on how much (or whether) underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares.

The announcement came hours after the company released its first earnings report as a public company, beating analysts’ revenue estimates but missing on earnings-per-share estimates. It also comes two months after its massive IPO.

Circle issues USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar that has a $65 billion market cap and is the second-largest stablecoin. Its circulation “grew 90% year-over-year to $61.3 billion at quarter end, and has grown an additional 6.4% to $65.2 billion as of August 10, 2025,” per the earnings report.

Some of the risk factors of the offering include that the company faces “intense and increasing competition” and that “stablecoins may face periods of uncertainty, loss of trust, or systemic shocks resulting in the potential for rapid redemption requests (or runs),” per the SEC filing.

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OP token rises after payments card provider Ether.fi finalizes migration to the layer 2 network

OP, the governance token for OP Mainnet, has increased as much as 5% since Tuesday night following news that Ether.fi, a decentralized finance protocol known for providing noncustodial crypto payment cards, completed its migration to the ethereum layer 2 blockchain network. 

Ether.fi’s move resulted in around $220 million in total value locked coming to OP Mainnet, the largest single TVL event in the network’s history, as well as over 70,000 payment cards and more than 300,000 accounts, according to a blog post from Ether.fi

Originally on alternative layer 2 network Scroll, Ether.fi made the switch to OP Mainnet due to lower median transaction fees of $0.00001 and sub-250-millisecond finality times. 

“To ship what comes next, we needed infrastructure that could handle real-time payments at consumer volume,” Ether.fi CEO Mike Silagadze told Sherwood News. “OP Mainnet delivered on every dimension. Three days to migrate $220M with no downtime answered the question. Now we get to build.” 

The migration comes about two months after Coinbase-incubated blockchain Base announced moving away from Optimism’s OP Stack. 

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Ethereum climbs to highest point since end of January

Ethereum has rallied 8% in the last 24 hours to trade just under the $2,390 level, liquidating over $151.7 million worth of ethereum short positions in the period. 

The last time ethereum was at its current level was the last day of January, data from CoinGecko shows.

According to Jim Hwang, COO of investment company Firinne Capital, ETH has been acting as a risk asset: declining in times of heightened uncertainties such as the conflict in Iran, inflation expectations, and diminished rate cut hopes.

“Only in the last 24+ hours when these uncertainties have diminished are we seeing prices lift again. We can feel a bit of optimism but to the extent that this cease fire remains tentative, we should probably view the current ETH price gains with caution,” Hwang told Sherwood News. 

A GlassNode senior analyst, who maintains the pseudonymous X account CryptoVizArt, said on X that ethereum has “reclaimed the one-to-three month holder cost basis at around $2,300. So far, this structure is consistent with a bear market relief rally, comparable to the bounces observed in Q3-Q4 2022, rather than a structural trend reversal.” 

Tom Lee, chairman of ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies, said ethereum’s performance since the start of the Iran conflict demonstrates how the cryptocurrency is a “wartime store of value,” per the firm’s press release on Monday, in which it announced acquired 71,524 additional tokens worth $170.5 million. That brings its total stockpile to nearly 4.9 million tokens, or 4% of the total supply of ethereum. 

That said, the founder of venture capital firm Kenetic, Jehan Chu, told Sherwood, “It’s clear that regaining ATH [all-time high] will take real-world revenue-generation, and not just a Tom Lee narrative.” 

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