By the close of Circle Internet Group’s first trading day on Thursday, June 5, its stock had rocketed to $88, a 180% jump from the price institutional investors paid for their shares in the underwriting led by JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup. The upshot: The company and insiders combined left a gigantic amount of money on the table by agreeing to a price far below what investors were willing to pay. As Fortune previously noted, that “left on the table” figure was the seventh largest in the history of all IPOs since 1980, exceeded only by the debuts of Visa, Airbnb, Snowflake, Rivian, DoorDash, and Coupang, the latter nicknamed “the Amazon of South Korea.”
Circle was just revving up. On Friday, June 6, its stock jumped another nearly 30% to $107.5. That additional leap hurtled the issuer for the USDC stablecoin to a historic record. Jay Ritter—a professor at the University of Florida and the world’s leading expert on IPOs—confirmed that for all go-public events since 1980 that raised $500 million or more, Circle’s two-day moonshot of nearly 250% ranks as by far the highest. The crypto favorite’s showing easily eclipsed the second place “pop” sounded by software provider C3.ai of 209% at its 2020 entry on the Nasdaq.
