Company: CRCL
Filing Date: 2025-04-01
Form Type: S-1
Source: 0001193125-25-070481
Chunk: 181

Company: Circle Internet Group, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-01
Form: S-1
Chunk 181
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 estimates that as of 2022, approximately 1.4 billion people, or 24% of adults globally, lack an account at a financial institution or mobile   
 money provider (29% of adults in developing economies). While progress has been made on this front with some traditional financial system providers entering new markets, these unbanked figures still represent more than a billion people. Financial 
 access metrics also often exhibit meaningful gender gaps, both in terms of bank accounts as well as access to credit. Small- and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”) can also be inhibited in access to                                                  
 credit. The IMF has estimated that, in 2022, approximately 75% of countries reporting SME loan data saw a decline in SME loans relative to the size of their economies, as COVID support measures unwound.                                             |

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The new internet financial system The internet introduced the idea of open and permissionless networks, initially enabling anyone to communicate with anyone else over simple electronic protocols that connected computers to one another in a peer-to-peerfashion. Early adopters used the internet for sharing email, posting on community forums, and sharing basic documents. Driven by the openness of this emerging global network, eventually millions of developers and companies built new applications and developed products leveraging the power and underlying infrastructure of these open networks. As the underlying network infrastructure improved through broadband, mobile technology, and advances in computing power, exponential network effects took hold, and the internet transformed virtually every incumbent industry, radically reshaping the unit economics of software, media, communications, and commerce. Similarly, we believe that the advent of blockchain networks and the internet financial system has the opportunity to transform the financial industry and digital commerce by reshaping the customer experience, the unit economics, and the ultimate reach of the financial system. Over the next decade, we believe that this fundamental change will be felt in a similar manner to the changes that have occurred in other industries as they adapted to earlier generations of internet technologies. The internet financial system, and the blockchain networks that provide its foundation, offers enormous potential advantages over the traditional financial system, including:

| • |     | Open, global, and interoperable public network infrastructure that enables transactions between counterparties to settle 
 nearly instantly and at a cost as low as a fraction of a cent per transaction.                                           |

| • |     | By using blockchains, transactions and financial contracts can provide greater transparency into financial flows, while 
 also leveraging cryptography to enhance privacy and security.                                                           |

| • |     | Using smart contracts, blockchain networks