130: Circle IPOs, Jamie bends and Wall Street buys in

Marc Baumann

and

Sangam Bharti

Jun 07, 2025

∙ Paid

Hey, it’s Marc.

Three years ago, crypto was dead, IPOs were frozen, and Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a fraud.

This week:

Circle IPO’d, surged 4x, and is now trading at a $20B+ valuation. A business that earns a net interest margin is now trading at 146x 2024 earnings. The only way to interpret this information is public markets are incredibly bullish on the growth of stablecoins.
Jamie Dimon is accepting Bitcoin as collateral (yes, that Jamie)
Robinhood just bought Bitstamp to go global
Kraken launched Prime to steal Wall Street clients

And while everyone was watching the charts, Visa went full stealth mode—embedding AI + stablecoin payments for 50M merchants, starting with street vendors in Vietnam.

Also: The most comprehensive AI report of the year just dropped. 320 pages. Highly recommended.

We also released our Stablecoin x AI report. 🔥 Access here

Stablecoin market map for businesses — Stablecoin market map 2025

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Top Boardroom Reads This Week

Digital Assets

Stablecoins x AI: the next super cycle? (51)
2025: The Year of Payment Stablecoins (WSJ, Deloitte)
A New Frontier for Digital Asset Treasuries (Paul Veradittakit)
Stablecoin Payments from the Ground Up 2025 (Artemis)

AI

Artificial Intelligence: Trends 2025 (Bond Capital) (🚨massive!)
The state of AI 2025 (51)
Google Kills the Checkout (51)
Orchestrating agentic AI for intelligent business operations (IBM)
State-Of-The-Art Prompting For AI Agents (YCombinator)
Humanity Deserves Better (Jony Ive and Laurene Powell)
How Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Rewrites the Rules of Search (a16z)
AI Agent versus MCP (ByteByteGo)
Sundar Pichai on AI, Antitrust Suits, Privacy, Google Search, Gadgets (Bloomberg)

Circle goes public

Circle ($CRCL) IPO’d at $31 and shot up to $122 on Day 1 — getting halted for volatility and settling around $107, giving it a valuation north of $18B. While Tether leads in volume, Circle now leads in legitimacy. And it's building the public trust moat PayPal and Stripe haven't matched in crypto.

Why it matters: The IPO market has been frozen for 3 years. Now it’s thawing and Circle just proved that crypto infrastructure now commands fintech-level premiums. This isn’t about one company. It’s about the signal it sends to Kraken, Chainalysis, Gemini, and every other unicorn on deck: the window is open. And Wall Street is ready to buy the rails. ANNOUNCEMENT, ANALYSIS

Jamie Dimon just collateralized Bitcoin

What happened: JPMorgan is now accepting Bitcoin ETF shares as loan collateral, starting with BlackRock’s IBIT. That means clients can pledge crypto ETFs for secured lending, include them in net worth calculations, and use JPM’s prime infra — just like they would with stocks or bonds. Yes, this is the same Jamie Dimon who once called Bitcoin a “fraud.” His new take:

“I don’t think we should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke.”

Why it matters: This isn’t about lending. It’s about legitimacy. Bitcoin ETFs now hold $128B+. JPMorgan manages $3.6T in assets. And now it’s treating crypto ETFs like any other financial instrument. Once the largest U.S. bank normalizes Bitcoin collateral, the remaining institutional walls start to crumble. RELEASE, ANALYSIS

Kraken launches Prime Brokerage for Wall Street

Kraken launched Kraken Prime, a full-service crypto brokerage for hedge funds, asset managers, and corporates—bundling trading, custody, and credit into one institutional-grade platform. With 24/7 service, T+1 credit, and access to 90% of crypto market liquidity, Kraken is taking direct aim at Wall Street’s prime brokers.

So what? Kraken’s move signals that crypto-native firms are no longer just building retail tools, they’re coming for institutional money. RELEASE

Robinhood buys Bitstamp for $200M to go global

The deal gives Robinhood over 50 crypto licenses across Europe, the UK, and Asia, along with access to Bitstamp’s deep liquidity, lending stack, and long-term institutional client base. Think: white-label crypto services, order books, staking, custody, and smart order routing — all now under Robinhood’s roof.

Why it matters: This isn’t a retail remix. It’s a strategic reboot to build crypto infrastructure for funds, fintechs, and RIAs, without starting from scratch. With Coinbase and Kraken focusing on compliance, Robinhood’s playbook is clear: acquire trust, accelerate, and expand into markets where regulation is already working. For exchanges and fintechs eyeing global crypto flows, the window is narrowing. Robinhood just jumped ahead. RELEASE

Visa quietly expands AI and stablecoin strategy

Visa is embedding AI and stablecoin rails across Asia. It’s launching Visa Intelligent Commerce to open its payment APIs to AI developers. It’s also expanding stablecoin-backed card issuance with partners like StraitsX and DTC Pay. Visa has already settled $225M+ in stablecoins and now targets 50M merchants with AI-ready payments—quietly testing Tap to Confirm and smartphone-based checkout for street vendors in Vietnam. NEWS

So what? Visa is laying the rails for AI agents to transact on user’s behalf. And, it is not alone. AI in commerce is gaining rapid popularity with giants like Google, PayPal and Mastercard experimenting with agentic payments and shopping. This will change the entire entire e-commerce stack.