STABLECOIN SAVANT

Circle's blockbuster June IPO crowned a new crypto tycoon, handed early backers multibillion-dollar windfalls and thrust the stablecoin boom into the spotlight.

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Jeremy Allaire, 54, has spent the past three decades laying the plumbing that underlies the internet. First came Allaire Corp., which he cofounded in 1995 and which developed ColdFusion, a popular suite of software used to build websites. He sold Allaire to Macromedia for $360 million in 2001. Next: Brightcove, a video-streaming platform that raised $55 million in a public offering in 2012. But his third venture—Circle, the issuer of digital tokens pegged one-to-one to fiat currencies like the dollar, known as stablecoins—has delivered his biggest payoff.