Well, stable coins in focus today. Circle, issuer of the stable coin USDC started trading today at $69 per share. It's after pricing its initial public offering at $31. For more, we're bringing in Heath Tarbert, president of Circle. Heath, welcome to the show. Congrats on the big day, Heath. You know, the company, as I understand it, it's been around some time. I think he founded it around, correct me if I'm wrong here, around 12 years ago. So why go public now, Heath? And what went into that decision?

Well, that's exactly right. Circle's been around for a long time, and it's been our long-term goal and aim, and part of our strategy, to go public. As was said earlier, trust, transparency, and reliability is really key in this industry. And we're the world's largest regulated stable coin issuer. And so it was only natural that to raise the level of trust, transparency, and governance, we would go public, be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and be held to those high standards. So that is why we are a public company, but in many ways, this is just the beginning.

So talk to us about what's next then, I guess. We're seeing huge demand, we should say, for your shares in today's session. I know it was oversubscribed, the shares are going up quite a lot today. So there's a lot of excitement around this. But what is next? And talk to me about the profit profile of the company. How you guys make money on the stable coin business.

Yeah, so we are, we are engaged in building the world's largest and most widely used stable coin network. And wherever there is regulation, we are seeking to have the highest level, to get the right licenses, because we really think that's going to be the differentiator. And so the more our stable coins are used throughout the world, the better it is for our network, and the network effects take place. And so we obviously have the network, uh, the amount of stable coins that we have in circulation, we have those reserves, invested in very high-quality liquid assets, but we also have a number of tech products and protocols that make us a far better network than some of our competitors out there. Uh, and so those come with fees and, and we're continuing to build out those revenue streams as well. But again, when we look at what we're offering compared to the traditional payment systems, it's not even comparison in terms of the amount and the cost to transfer things over the internet through blockchain protocols.

Heath, I'm very curious to get your take on the Genius Act, which is making its way through the halls of power in DC, Heath. I'm just curious what you all at Circle make of that legislation. Are you positive on it? Uh, you got questions, are you skeptical? I'm curious to hear your take.

Yeah, we're very positive on the legislation. We think it's probably the best piece of stable, sound stable coin regulation in the United States that we've seen, because in many ways it enshrines the Circle way of doing business. We were, we had one-to-one backing with high-quality liquid assets, transparency, as well as monthly attestations, uh, ever before it was required of us. So we set about building, again, the world's best stable coin in our view, and we asked ourselves what characteristics would that have. And the characteristics that the Genius Act would enshrine in law is essentially those characteristics that we imposed upon ourselves before anyone told us we had to. So we're very supportive of the legislation. We think it's, it's outstanding, and the fact that it has broad bipartisan support shows the importance that despite the partisanship that's going on in Washington and elsewhere, this is so important for the country that we move forward.