The veteran left the CFO and handed over, and Circle's first year of listing was turbulent and transformed

According to Woofun AI, Circle (CRCL.US) experienced a double change of management and board of directors after more than a year of listing. Co-founder Sean Neville and Chief Independent Director Rajeev Date have successively resigned as directors, while Jeremy Fox-Geen, the chief financial officer who led the company through the initial public offering, will also complete the handover before the end of the year.

This series of personnel changes marks that the stablecoin giant is entering a critical period of power transition and strategic reshaping after experiencing the baptism of the capital market. Although the official statement stated that these departures were orderly board updates and did not involve differences with the company's operating policies, the collective exit of the core founding team undoubtedly raised the market's deep concern about the company's future governance structure and strategic continuity. In the context of the continued expansion of USDC's circulation, whether Circle can diversify its business under the leadership of new management and get rid of a single dependency on reserve interest income has become the core current suspense.

The reduction in board seats and the restructuring of the governance structure are a direct reflection of this change. On September 25, Circle officially revealed that Sean Neville will resign as a director. Meanwhile, Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Fox-Geen also confirmed that he will leave office before the end of the year. Looking back to April of this year, Circle's chief independent director Rajeev Date fondly recalled in a letter to shareholders that he met Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville, who had just started the business over 12 years ago, and looked forward to continuing to accompany the company from startup to market.

However, after just two months, Date stepped down as chief independent director. Following Neville's official departure on September 25, Circle's board seats were further reduced from the original 9 to 7 seats. Both Neville and Date have left the board, and Fox-Geen is currently responsible for the company's finances, but his successor has yet to be determined. Circle emphasized in both regulatory documents that the director's resignation was an orderly board update. Date and Neville left for personal reasons, and Fox-Geen's departure did not involve differences with the company's operations, policies, or practices, but the public documents did not give a common deep reason for the departure of the three.

Rajeev Date has been a Circle Director since 2013 and became the Chief Independent Director in November 2024. He was the first Deputy Director of the US Consumer Financial Protection Administration, also chaired the Remuneration Committee within Circle, and participated in the Audit and Nomination and Corporate Governance Committee. Since Circle's chairman and CEO are Jeremy Allaire, according to corporate governance rules, the chief independent director is responsible for calling independent board meetings, presiding over meetings in the absence of the chairman, and participating in the board agenda and CEO succession planning. As a result, after Date left, the most immediate arrangement was for Craig Broderick, who joined the board in 2023 and was Goldman Sachs's chief risk officer, to take over as chief independent director.

This handover ensures a smooth transition to the board's governance structure, but it also reflects Circle's continued efforts to bring in external professional governance forces.

Sean Neville co-founded Circle with Jeremy Allaire in 2013, retired from day-to-day management in 2019, and has been a director ever since. According to this year's shareholder documents, Neville participated in the work of the Nomination and Corporate Governance, Risk, and Strategy Committee. His resignation on September 25 ended his tenure on the board of directors, but did not remove him as a shareholder.

Circle's board of directors went through a process of increasing and then decreasing this year: in March, Circle invited Microsoft executive Kirk Koenigsbauer to join, increasing the number of directors to 9; reducing the number of board seats to 8 after leaving in June; and reducing the number of seats to 7 after Neville left in September. Former Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky, who joined the previous year, and Koenigsbauer brought to the board of directors experience operating large-scale technology platforms. After the departure of two senior directors, Circle still has Michele Burns, who has been a director since 2013, and Allaire, co-founder, to maintain the stability of its core leadership.

In terms of the company's equity design, Circle set two types of common shares, Class A and Class B, with voting rights at the time of listing. Among them, Class A shares had one vote for each Class B share, and the founder held five votes per share, but the total voting rights for Class B shares were capped at 30%. The March shareholders' power of attorney included Neville's viable options as beneficial holdings and listed its share of approximately 6.1% of voting rights. According to the shareholding change documents submitted in early September, he directly holds about 3.016 million Class B shares and another 133,000 shares are held by trusts.

Although the board seats have been surrendered, voting rights for these shares remain with the shareholding. The company's articles of association also set a conversion period for Class B shares: they can be converted early if certain conditions are met, and all Class A shares can be converted to Class A shares by June 5, 2030 at the latest.

This mechanism ensures the gradual dilution of the founder's control over a long period of time and is in line with the governance norms of public companies.

On September 1, Neville converted 50,000 Class B shares into Class A shares and sold them for an average transaction price of approximately $92.09. He set up a scheduled trading plan on February 27, which allows the conversion and sale of up to 300,000 shares during the year. Fox-Geen also set up a deal plan to sell up to 153,500 shares in March. Both plans predate the September personnel announcement, in which Circle stated that their departure was not at odds with the company's operations, policies, or practices. Neville has already focused his work on Catena Labs, which he founded. The company develops account, payment, and fund control tools for AI agents, and Circle Ventures was one of the investors when it raised $18 million last year. This year, Catena raised another $30 million in Series A financing, with a cumulative total of $48 million. When the Arc public mainline went live on September 16, Catena announced that it was connected, and customers could exchange dollars for USDC and allow authorized artificial intelligence agents to pay on Arc.

This trend shows the deep integration of the Circle ecosystem with the emerging AI payment sector.

On September 18, the US Monetary Authority granted preliminary conditional approval to Catena's application to establish a national trust bank. The proposed businesses listed in the regulatory documents include digital asset escrow, investment management, and trust services. Banks must complete pre-opening requirements before obtaining final approval.

Meanwhile, Fox-Geen joined Circle in May 2021, was responsible for the company's pre- and post-listing finance, and participated in a $1.2 billion initial public offering in 2025. Circle said he will continue as CFO until December 31, hand over his position if a successor is found early, and stay with the company to assist in the handover until the end of the year. The company has hired headhunters to find successors. The regulatory documents also set out separation arrangements: after complying with agreements such as competition restrictions and signing relevant documents, he can receive a total of 1.05 million US dollars in cash within 12 months after leaving office, early ownership of some restricted stocks, and an extension of the exercise of options.

This compensation package reflects the company's recognition of the contributions of core finance executives.

According to data compiled by Woofun AI, the USDC circulation volume at the end of the second quarter was 73.269 billion US dollars, an increase of 19% over the same period last year, but fell about 4.8% from the 77 billion US dollars at the end of the first quarter. Circle customers minted approximately $83 billion in USDC during the quarter and redeemed approximately $86.8 billion; the number of wallets holding at least $10 USDC on the chain increased to 7.01 million, an increase of about 24% over the same period last year. Circle's total revenue and reserve revenue for the quarter was $701 million, of which $668 million came from USDC reserve asset earnings, accounting for about 95%; other revenue such as subscriptions and services was $33.58 million. The average quarterly USDC circulation increased 25.2%, but reserve yield declined 66 basis points year over year, and reserve revenue ultimately only increased by 5.3%. According to Circle's split in the earnings report, the increase in circulation brought about an increase of about $147 million, while the decline in yield offset about $114 million.

This data reveals that the main driver of Circle's revenue growth has moved from scale expansion to efficiency optimization, yet downward pressure on yield remains significant.

Circle also measured the impact of declining interest rates in its second-quarter report, saying that on June 30, the USDC circulation volume and reserve structure remain unchanged, the yield will drop by 1 percentage point. Reserve revenue for the next 12 months is expected to decrease by 737 million US dollars, and distribution and transaction costs will be reduced by 360 million US dollars at the same time. After the two are offset, the balance of revenue after deducting this set of costs is expected to decrease by approximately $377 million.

At the same time, competitive threats are growing. On June 30, payment consortium Open Standard announced that it is preparing to launch Open USD, another US dollar stablecoin, saying that more than 140 companies have signed up to use it, including Coinbase (COIN.US), Visa (V.US), and Stripe. The alliance proposed that reserve proceeds be handed over to partners after deducting a small amount of management fees. While allocating USDC proceeds with Circle, Coinbase publicly stated that it will provide customers with stablecoin options including Open USD. Open USD is scheduled to go live this year, and the actual scale of its issuance and impact on USDC remains to be seen. On September 22, Circle also revealed that Binance subscribed to its new shares for $100 million and signed a five-year USDC promotion agreement. Under the new agreement, Circle will pay Binance monthly incentive fees linked to USDC balances within its modular wallet infrastructure at undisclosed rates.

This partnership aims to strengthen USDC's market position through exchange channels.

In terms of business development, Circle pre-sold 807.5 million ARC tokens to institutional investors in the second quarter, at $0.30 each, totaling approximately US$242 million, of which US$222 million was received during the quarter. The balance sheet at the end of June listed the full pre-sale amount as deferred revenue, which was not included in other revenue of $33.58 million for the quarter. Circle raised its other revenue guidance for 2026 from $150 million to $170 million to $310 million to $330 million in August. The financial footnote states that the new guidance includes future confirmed ARC pre-sale revenue.

The Arc public mainnet went live on September 16, and transaction fees were paid using USDC. Circle also completed the genesis minting of 10 billion ARC tokens, but has yet to commit to a public offering; the network currently uses licensing validators, and the tokens are intended to be used for proof of stake mechanisms that may be transferred in the future. The pre-sale agreement stipulates that if Circle fails to deliver the tokens, or if Arc does not complete the agreed consensus mechanism conversion by May 8, 2028, the buyer with more than half of the subscription share can request a refund of the purchase price.

Another transaction that has yet to be completed is the acquisition of Tazapay, a Singaporean cross-border payment platform. Circle signed an agreement in September to acquire the remaining shares with the company's shares of about 400 million US dollars. The final consideration will be adjusted according to the target company's cash and debt items. According to Circle, Tazapay's annual payment processing volume exceeds $25 billion, and about 60% of the transaction volume already involves stablecoins. The acquisition is expected to be completed in 2027 and is still subject to regulatory approval, including the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

The sharp swings in stock prices reflect market concerns about the company's future growth. On February 5, the company's stock price closed at $50.23. By February 25, the company announced results for the fourth quarter of 2025. USDC circulation for the quarter increased 72% year over year to 75.3 billion US dollars, and the total revenue and reserve revenue were about 770 million US dollars, up 77% year on year; the stock price rose about 35.5% on the same day to close at 83.14 US dollars.

On March 18, the stock price rose to $132.84, up 164.5% from February 5, and fell to $85.10 on April 9, down 35.9%. On May 11, the stock price closed again at $131.76, up 54.8% from the April low, and fell to $60.35 on August 3, retreating 54.2% from the May high.

Circle rebounded to $103.23 on September 3, up 71.1% from its August low; it closed at $89 on September 25, still 33% below its closing price on March 18. On July 29, Bernstein lowered Circle's target price from $190 to $140 while maintaining an outperforming market rating; its year-end USDC supply forecast was lowered to $83 billion, a 37% drop from the previous estimate.

On August 3, Morgan Stanley (MS.US) downgraded the rating to reduced holdings. The target price was lowered from $106 to $38, worrying that USDC growth would slow and that transaction revenue would take longer to make up for the pressure on reserve earnings.

Now, two directors who accompanied Circle through the startup and listing stages have left one after another, and the CFO who led the company to complete its listing is also about to hand over. Meanwhile, USDC circulation is still growing, but declining reserve yields and channel sharing are holding back revenue growth; payment networks and Arc have yet to prove that they can continue to contribute enough revenue. Circle needed to prove to the market during the management handover that it can gradually get rid of its high dependence on interest reserves and build a new growth engine through technological innovation and ecological expansion.

This transformation process is full of challenges, but it also contains huge opportunities, and its success or failure will determine Circle's long-term competitiveness in the stablecoin space.