USDC Creator Circle Raises The Largest Crypto Round in History

Circle, the creator of the second largest stablecoin, USDC, has just raised $440 million in private investment – the largest investment round in the crypto and blockchain sector. After the massive funding round, Circle could go public via a special purpose acquisition vehicle (SPAC) deal. 

Founded by CEO Jeremy Allaire, Circle announced that it has raised $440 million from an array of private equity, institutional and strategic investors. The list includes Fidelity, Digital Currency Group, FTX, Breyer Capital, Valor Capital, among others. 

Administered in partnership with Coinbase, the dollar-backed USDC is seen as the safer cousin to Tether’s USDT, which continues to hold the lion’s share of stablecoins in circulation. USDC is now the eighth-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap and the second-largest stablecoin behind Tether, with $22 billion in USDC in circulation for now, according to CoinGecko. 

“At FTX we’re excited to partner further with Circle to help expand these capabilities to all crypto users,” FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried said in a statement. The crypto derivatives exchange and the retail subsidiary Blockfolio announced to go “USDC-native”, as they plugged into Circle’s payments infrastructure, allowing users to fund their accounts with the USDC stablecoin.

Circle declined to disclose the terms of the new financing deal, including its latest valuation. After the funding, the crypto-native financial services firm could go public via a SPAC deal, at a $4 billion valuation. 

Two More Exploits on Binance Smart Chain DeFi Protocol

On the other hand, there have been another two exploit incidents of Binance Smart Chain (BSC)-enabled DeFi protocols. Last Friday, BSC-powered BurgerSwap suffered a flash loan attack that saw hackers make off with around $7.2 million of altcoins That includes $3.2 million in BURGER, $1.6 million in wrapped binance coin (WBNB) and $1.4 million in USDT. 

Also, BSC-powered AMM platform Belt Finance experienced the latest flash loan attack. This resulted in a profit of $6.23 million for the attacker and an overall $50 million loss for the platform.

In its blog post dated Sunday, Belt Finance said they will release a “compensation plan” in the next 48 hours.

BurgerSwap’s native token $BURGER is trading at $6.1, down 31% from the recent high of $8.93. Also, Belt Finance’s native token $BELT is trading at $27.56, down 52% from the recent high of $58.33.