Banker Bob Diamond was forced to pull the ripcord this week on his attempt to take stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Financial public via a special purpose acquisition company.
The ex-Barclays Plc boss’s dealmaking ability probably wasn’t the issue. Nor was the target’s financial performance: Circle earns interest income on the reserves that backstop its stablecoin USDC, and rising interest rates have thus benefited its bottom line.
Instead, the party pooper was almost certainly the Securities and Exchange Commission. Following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in November, the regulator’s already elevated wariness of crypto is now at DEFCON 1. Trying to match a crypto company with a SPAC — another financial invention unloved by the SEC — is therefore a Sisyphean endeavor.
Source: Crypto and SPACs are a Doomed Match in the Eyes of the SEC – Bloomberg
