Cut off three businesses in one year, co-CEO stepped down, Circle decides to die for stablecoin

Written ahead: Sean Neville and Jeremy Allaire, co-founders of Circle They explained in the article why Circle recently cut off its exchange, OTC and payment app businesses, that is, they hope that Circle will bet on global stablecoins in the future. In order to achieve this goal, Circle not only adjusted its business, but also changed the company's structure. Sean also resigned as the co-CEO, but it will still retain the position of board member.

The following is the full content of the article:

On the way to 2020, Circle will pay close attention to global stablecoins, especially USDC, and its powerful possibilities for individuals, businesses and governments around the world.

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More than 6 years ago, we envisioned a world where value could flow freely and instantly on the Internet—reducing business costs, allowing more people to participate in the financial system, and stimulating financial innovation with the currency itself programmable. Global stablecoin and USDC were created and launched through the CENTRE industry alliance, and they promote the next phase of Circle's mission.

Our first focus in the 2020 product roadmap is the new global payment, escrow and wallet API for stablecoins. These APIs will be provided as a service to businesses and developers everywhere so that they can take advantage of the innovation and efficiency of stablecoins without having to bear the cost, complexity and risk of implementing this infrastructure.

Stablecoin platform services

Our focus on stablecoins builds on Circle's core strengths: the platform services infrastructure we've built and iterated over the past six years. These core services support USDC and unlock financial use cases worldwide.

Circle's platform services steadily support our payment, investment, trade and USDC products and businesses by providing powerful basic hosting, risk and identity management, compliance management, data science, card and banking gateways, and blockchain gateways. These platforms serve like a giant iceberg, and our products are just the tip of the iceberg visible on the water.

In 2020, we are excited to showcase the core we have built and expose these powerful services through new APIs. These APIs will accelerate the application of stablecoins and USDC, which has become the fastest growing and largest complete reserve stablecoin in the world.

Building a business at this stage is exciting because many of our imaginations about the future of Circle are now finally a reality. Stablecoins, third-generation blockchains, and in-depth global policies tell us that the stage of large-scale popularization of cryptocurrencies will come in the next two to three years.

Business simplification and organizational change

Circle's recent business and organizational changes confirm our plans for 2020. Effectively focusing on the stablecoin platform means that we must reduce complexity, tighten our product portfolio, and organize our team to perform tasks in a more agile manner.

The streamlining of the business is reflected in the following examples. These decisions have improved Circle's ability to enter the next stage:

We announced today that we have sold the Circle Trade OTC business to Kraken. We have known Jesse for many years and admired him and his team. We are confident and expect that Circle Trade customers and partners will continue to find first-rate OTC liquidity services through Kraken. Circle Trade represents the great success of the industry and Circle, and we are excited to see Kraken develop it further.

It has been reported earlier that we have successfully sold the exchange business Poloniex and divested it to become an independent company supported by the Asian Investment Group. Although there are many reports that distort the facts, Poloniex has indeed brought major changes to Circle. In order to pay close attention to our stablecoin platform and the current state of US regulation, we think we should give up the exchange business and let it be the new owner In the hands of prosperity.

This year, we also closed the standalone Circle Pay app. Even though we closed the mobile app, the underlying platform technology, which has been tested for millions of users and billions of dollars in transactions, will become part of our new stablecoin platform service. This will enable third-party applications to take advantage of the underlying platform services of Pay and other Circle applications.

SeedInvest is the largest equity crowdfunding platform in the United States. It is also a registered broker-dealer and alternative trading system we acquired in 2018.It will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary of Circle.

Our business has reduced complexity and simplified-so has our organizational structure and team. After Poloniex split from Circle, more than 80 Circle employees arrived at the new independent company.

As the two founders of Circle, we have also streamlined: I (Sean, the co-founder of Circle) believe that during this period of successful business change, it is the right time for me to resign as co-CEO , although I will Independent directors of Circle's board keep in touch with the company. I also hope to advance this mission through CENTRE and other new avenues that will cross important challenges in infrastructure, regulatory policy, economics and product development. This will be my last blog post co-authored with Jeremy (Circle co-founder).

At the executive level, our chief financial officer, Naeem Ishaq, and chief legal officer, Gus Coldebella, are also transitioning from the company to new ventures that fit their expertise. Gus will continue to advise companies on important government relations issues. We are grateful for their contributions.

These and other related organizational changes within the company will help match the company's operations and talents with our stablecoin platform service focus and 2020 product roadmap.

Fundamentally, the technical, regulatory, and product issues of the cryptocurrency industry are human issues, and solving these issues requires the joint efforts of great people. In 2020, we will continue to focus on building and developing our talent team to enter the next stage of Circle. We welcome those who share our faith in our mission to build an open global financial system.

Vision for 2020

Since Circle was founded in the summer of 2013, our vision and mission have never changed. However, in our mission to achieve this vision, we have corrected many mistakes. We have learned many important lessons that tell us where we are today and what we plan for the future.

The global interest in stable currencies and digital currencies is supported by central bank funding, the introduction of the third generation of public blockchains, and the accelerated development of global crypto policies, all of which have provided us with new platform services launched in 2020 The foundation of excitement. We are happy to put these technologies into the hands of creative developers and businesses everywhere.

In this nascent crypto ecosystem, many of us started a common mission many years ago to create an improved, inclusive, and open financial system for the world. So far, we have had a small but undeniable impact, but it is far from enough. In the next ten years, we will bravely face the challenges and opportunities in global policy, economics and technology.

Sean & Jeremy

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