Peer-to-peer payments technology company Circle Internet Financial has abandoned its $9 billion blank-cheque merger with Bob Diamond-backed investment vehicle Concord Acquisition Corp., effectively shelving the firm’s plans to go public.

Circle, the principal operator of the USDC stablecoin, agreed a merger with Concord in July 2021. It renegotiated the terms of the deal in February of this year which doubled its valuation from $4.5 billion to $9 billion.

However, the recent crash of crypto exchange FTX has resulted in massive instability across the entire crypto market which is likely to have informed Circle’s desire not to go public at this moment. The crypto sector has seen almost $2 trillion wiped off its valuation in recent months, with the largest stablecoin Bitcoin down by 75% from a high of $69,000.

In a statement, Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and chief executive officer of Circle, said: "We are disappointed the proposed transaction timed out, however, becoming a public company remains part of Circle's core strategy to enhance trust and transparency, which has never been more important.”

He added on Twitter: “While there are a lot of challenges within the crypto and blockchain industry, I am of the very firm conviction that we are going to decisively leave the speculative value phase and enter the utility value phase, and stablecoins such as USDC will play a huge part.”

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