The company filed a confidential draft S-1 document to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it said in a statement. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined, according to the filing.

USDC is the second-largest stablecoin, with a market cap of about $25 billion. Tether, the largest, has a market cap around $95 billion, CoinMarketCap data show.

Circle's move to become a publicly listed company comes one day after the SEC approved a series of spot bitcoin ETFs. The initial public offering is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions, the company said.

Circle planned to go public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) deal in 2021, with a February 2022 valuation reported at $9 billion. However, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said that the deal fell through after his firm didn't complete the SEC's "qualification in time."

The company laid off a portion of its workforce last year during a bear market that was spurred by the collapse of FTX, Celsius and Three Arrows Capital.

Shares in Coinbase (COIN) became publicly traded in April 2021, with a listing on Nasdaq at a valuation of $85.8 billion.

UPDATE (Jan. 11, 14:29 UTC): Adds context throughout.

Circle IPOs US

Oliver Knight

Oliver Knight joined CoinDesk as a news reporter in April 2022. Before joining CoinDesk, Knight was the Chief Reporter at Coin Rivet for three years. Having graduated with a journalism degree from Birmingham City University, Knight went on to work at various sports publications before diving into the world of Bitcoin in 2014. He does not have any crypto holdings.

Sheldon Reback

Sheldon Reback is CoinDesk's European news editor. Before joining the company, he spent 26 years as an editor at Bloomberg News, where he worked on beats as diverse as stock markets and the retail industry as well as covering the dot-com bubble of 2000-2002. He subsequently managed the Bloomberg Terminal's main news page before becoming the European editor for a global project to produce short, chart-based stories across the newsroom. His previous work as a journalist took him to Hong Kong, where he reported and edited for several technology magazines, and he also has experience in market research and writing computer manuals. Sheldon has an MBA from the London Business School and an industrial chemistry degree from Brunel University. He owns a small amount of ether.