Circle (CRCL) Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO Jeremy Allaire spent 2025 turning a long-standing thesis — that dollar-backed digital money would become core financial infrastructure — into a mainstream policy and technology agenda.
This feature is part of CoinDesk’s The list of most influential 2025.
Allaire appears to be proud of the strong regulatory foundation for his firm’s fiat-backed stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), which is the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization. During a February 25 interview with Bloomberg, in a thinly veiled attack on rival Tethers stablecoin he said, “It shouldn’t be a free pass, should it? Where you can just ignore American law and go do whatever the hell you want, anywhere and sell to the United States.”
“This is about consumer protection and financial integrity,” Allaire continued to add. “Whether you are an offshore company or based in Hong Kong, if you want to offer your dollar stablecoin in the US, you must register in the US, just as we must register everywhere else.”
Allaire’s advocacy in Washington helped build momentum behind the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act, or GENIUS Act, the first federal law to establish licensing and reserve standards for payment stablecoins, which passed the US Senate on June 17 and the House on July 17 before being signed by President Trump on July 18.
On June 30, in a Circle press release announcing the company’s submission of an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national trust bank, First National Digital Currency Bank, NA, Allaire said: “Establishing a national digital currency trust bank of this nature marks a significant milestone that is an important milestone in our internet-efficient and transparent financial system.”
In the fall, Allaire’s strategic focus shifted to Arc, the institutional blockchain Circle unveiled as a foundation for regulated, dollar-denominated financial activity.
In late October, while speaking to CNBC’s Sara Eisen at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he described Arc as “a financial OS for the Internet,” built for payments, currency, lending and capital markets workflows with sub-second settlement, privacy controls and predictable dollar prices.
He said demand for USDC in emerging markets was “very significant”, highlighting the Middle East, noting that more than 100 companies across banking, payments, technology and artificial intelligence tested Arc’s public testnet on October 28 ahead of a planned 2026 mainnet launch.
Allaire ended the year by expanding the frame further.
In a conversation with WIRED’s Steven Levy on Dec. 4, he called blockchain networks “economic OS paradigms” and said the shift to programmable financial systems would be “a big part of what unfolds for the Internet over the next five to 10 years.”
His influence in 2025 rested on more than product or policy wins. It came from articulating a coherent vision for digital dollars, embracing federal oversight and pushing an institutional blockchain agenda — making him one of the central figures shaping how programmable finance will work in the coming years.
