The 50 billion dollar company that does almost nothing

Something strange happens in Wall Street. It is not Elon Musk, Ai or a late -evening contribution by Donald Trump. It is a crypto company called Circle Internet Group, and it makes the market feel like the glorious days of the DOT com bubble.

Circle went to the stock exchange on June 5. In just eleven trading sessions, its stock exploded by almost unprecedented 675%and added over 42 billion US dollars to its market capitalization. The company is now dealing with an assessment that puts it in the same league as Tech unicorns and AI moon shots and contains a price in which investors essentially pay 295 US dollars for each $ 1 -dollar.

There is only one problem. Circle has no revolutionary AI. It does not build elegant consumer devices. The business model is shocking.

This is how it works: you give a circle a dollar. They give you a digital token called USDC that is worth the same dollar. They then absorb their actual dollars, invest it in something safe and short-term US financial bonds and collect interest.

You get the token. You get the profit. That’s it. That is the entire business.

This has prompted critics to mark Kreis as hardly as a glorified “money packaging”. Why does the Wall Street treat it like the next Tesla?

The answer is a word: StableCoin.

USDC is a stable coin, a digital token that a stable asset, in this case, the US dollar. The idea is that a real dollar sits on a reserve account for every USDC token. This makes it incredibly useful for crypto dealers who need the speed of digital assets without the wild volatility of Bitcoin.

And now the bulls rely on the fact that stable coins are about to make mainstream. The Senate has just adopted the “Genius Act”, the Landmark legislation, the banks, fintechs such as PayPal and even retailers such as Walmart and Amazon paving the way to use stable coins for payments. Suddenly the dream of crypto seems to be a real alternative to Visa or Mastercard within reach.

Save analysts. Citi forecast The StableCoin market could reach 3.7 trillion dollars by 2030. In this scenario, Circle is perfectly positioned as a neutral platform that is not bound to a single bank, to make money.

But there is a catch. The business model, which appears so brilliant in an environment with a high interest rate, is also the greatest weakness.

“The entire business of Circle is literally glued to the FED directive,” wrote a user in a viral post about Reddit’s R/Wallstreetbets. “It is a finance in a trench coat.”

When the Federal Reserve lowers the interest, the main sources of income of the circle shrink. There is also nothing that prevents bigger players from starting their own stable coins and deleting the edge of circle overnight. When everyone offers the same thing, the moat from Circle looks very flat. And yet the Wall Street is growing like the next Openai. What if the supervisory authorities change their melody? The entire model could be at risk. The business is remarkably fragile.

When a spokesman for Gizmodo was contacted, he said that the company was based on the IPO over a “quiet period” and legally stopped submitting advertising statements.

At the moment the hype wins. The existence of circle is on fire and is fueled by the promise of a future in which we all pay for our coffee with digital dollars. But under the surface, this 50 billion dollar company is not innovative or does not bother. It only keeps your money, gives you a digital receipt and is interested. And in the bizarre world of finances in 2025, this is enough enough to be crowned the new king of Wall Street.