Crypto Detective Zachxbt is calling the circle again this time around during the company’s insane Wall Street debut. In X, Zack said: “Circle leadership doesn’t really care about the industry.”
Circle’s IPO was launched at a price of less than $40 per share, exploded over $300 in more than a month. At its peak, the company was valued at nearly $80 billion.
This is not Zach’s first battle with the Circle and its CEO, Jeremy Allerle. He’s been on them for years and the IPO just made him crazy. Coinbase and Ripple were rumored to be focusing on the acquisition of Circle in early April, but the company refused to discuss those, publicly publicly and pursue a higher rating.
Zack calls for a failed freeze and doubles criticism
In February, Zack appeared in Jeremy’s reply on X, demanding answers as to why the circle hadn’t frozen 115,000 USDC linked to a Bibit Hack due to North Korea’s DPRK. Zach wrote:
“Tell the whole community why the circle hasn’t frozen 115k USDC yet. Meanwhile, Tether has already frozen 106K USDT several hours ago. We have to show more examples until Space realizes that the circle is a bad actor.”
He also dropped the hacked wallet address: 0xDA2E12E94060720581994EEC870F83D9C7200C2Caccusing him of limping. He added:
Then when another large hack hit, he said:
“After a $40 million exploit where the circle sat for an hour or two, the attacker can also expect loyalty if Circle doesn’t freeze 9m+$USDC after using CCTP to bridge from arbitrum to Ethereum.”
Despite all this, Jeremy and the Circle are silent. There are no replies. There are no statements. Just a ghost.
But two weeks before his latest post, Zack admitted that “Circle, Pax, or Tether trusts much more than Ripple.” However, trust does not mean recognition. He is not disappointed. His issue is how Circle handles accountability and who is actually doing things behind the scenes.
Arthur Hayes blames Coinbase Celcoll deal and Jeremy’s position
And Zack isn’t the only one who thinks something stinks. Last month, Arthur Hayes Published A blog post that aims directly at the heart of Circle Coinbase’s relationship. Arthur said Jeremy had no choice but to “consider his position at the request of Brian Armstrong, CEO of Papa Gimp Coinbase.”
Arthur was referring to a $900 million payment from Circle to Coinbase. This was the funds handed over in 2024 as part of a distribution agreement relating to USDC.
The transaction dates back to 2018, when Circle and Coinbase teamed up to form a centre consortium to co-manage USDC. In 2023, the arrangement ended, with the circle in full control and Coinbase gaining minority shareholders. However, even after splitting the venture, they agreed to share USDC revenues of 50/50.
Meaning Coinbase earns half of the interest in USDC’s reserves, whether the assets are on the platform or not. This cost circle is nearly $1 billion last year alone.
Arthur writes that circles need Coinbase to survive in the market. Especially since tethers (USDTs) still dominate most trading pairs worldwide. Hayes said, “Distributing stable rocks can be extremely expensive unless it is owned by a prisoner’s exchange, a social media company, or a legacy bank.”
According to him, Tether had no need to worry about it. Because it was born within Bitfinex, which already had a huge user base. However, in the case of the circle, there was no built-in customer base. They needed Coinbase for distribution. That’s the cost.
Arthur said crypto exchanges like Coinbase would require either a reduction in stock or a net profit to support Stablecoin. And for Circle, it’s 50%. He even said the deal was summarised to Jeremy as “accepting Brian Armstrong’s star spangled Dick Sands Rube.”
Arthur added that Coinbase must find something stupid outside the trajectory of the tether. This is because its users are mainly in the United States and Western Europe. Tethers were always fired from Western media. However, the story began to change when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik helped deposit Tether into the bank via Canter Fitzgerald. Still, Coinbase has already doubled over the yen. That’s why the deal got stuck.
