Circle plans to enter about 40 emerging and developing countries, chief executive Jeremy Allaire told Reuters on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok. He described the shift as a move "from the early adopter phase of blockchain technology into the mainstream scaling phase." Allaire said Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East are seeing organic demand from people and businesses that want to use stablecoins inside an internet-based economy. The comments, reported on 16 October, did not name the 40 markets or give a start date. They do mark the widest geographic claim the USDC issuer has made this month.
About a quarter of the stablecoin market
Reuters described Circle as the largest regulated stablecoin issuer, with roughly 25% of global stablecoin market share. Tether's USDT still holds nearly 60%. That gap is the constraint on the expansion. A push into markets where dollar stablecoins already circulate informally has to take share from USDT, or grow the pie, or both. Circle has been buying distribution. Reuters cited a $400 million acquisition of Tazapay and a $100 million strategic investment from Binance. Tazapay is a payments firm. The Binance cheque is a distribution deal with the largest exchange, not a change in who issues USDC. Neither figure, on its own, says how many of the 40 countries will have a licensed on-ramp this year.
Why Bangkok, and why now
Allaire spoke in the same city where Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh cooled near-term rate-hike odds, which we covered in the CPI note. Higher dollar rates usually support demand for dollar stablecoins in countries with weaker local currencies, and they also raise the yield Circle earns on the reserves behind USDC. Thailand, separately, has just allowed local bitcoin and ether ETFs. See the ETF rule that took effect on 16 October. Circle's plan is a payments story, not an ETF story. The overlap is that both are trying to put dollar-linked crypto inside existing financial pipes. Token funds were a different tape last week: XRP products took in about $70 million while bitcoin and ether funds saw redemptions.