China News Daily Official TheBitTimes.com

The company behind the second-largest USD-pegged stablecoin by market cap is naming its price for its upcoming US initial public offering (IPO). According to a Reuters report, USDC-issuer Circle says it is aiming for a $7.2 billion valuation in its upcoming IPO – about $28 per share – partially because of the current administration’s friendlier outlook on crypto regulations. US dollar-pegged stablecoins aim to maintain a 1:1 value with the US dollar. Tether’s USDT is the largest USD-pegged stablecoin by market value. Says Chief Investment Officer of Running Point Capital, Michael Ashley Schulman, “Issues regarding memecoin hype and more specifically Trump’s ventures into a namesake coin should not directly affect the outlook for stablecoins backed by hard currency.” According to the widely followed pseudonymous crypto analyst The Flow Horse, the Circle IPO valuation is “cheap.” “Circle IPO seems interesting to me....

The protocol reached a total value locked of $3.8 billion at its peak. Cross-chain protocol Wormhole has secured a $225 million investment at a valuation of $2.5 billion. According to the Nov. 29 announcement, the investment round was led by Brevan Howard, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Jump Trading, ParaFi, Dialectic, Borderless Capital, and Arrington Capital.  The Wormhole Foundation also announced the launch of Wormhole Labs, which the company says "is an independent technology company that specializes in building products, tools, and reference implementations that help grow cross-chain activity and development." Currently, its blockchain-to-blockchain communications technology is used to bridge assets, power oracle data feeds, and transfer non-fungible tokens. Wormhole was launched in 2021 and has since facilitated over $35 billion in transactions. Developers claim that the protocol processes over 2 million cross-chain messages across more than 30 chains every d...