Author: Liu Honglin
I came across a rather inconspicuous piece of news last night: According to the latest 13F filing, Dongfang Harbor's overseas fund bought over 30,000 shares of Circle in the latest reporting period, with a market value of over three million U.S. dollars, accounting for less than 0.3% of the entire portfolio.
Looking at this number alone, there is nothing particularly special about it. This level of position is quite common among many institutions.
However, the target itself makes this matter somewhat interesting.
What is Circle: The Business Logic of a Stablecoin Issuer
Circle is one of the stablecoin issuers, having just been listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2025. Breaking down its business is actually quite simple: Users exchange U.S. dollars for USDC, and the company takes these funds and allocates them to short-term U.S. Treasury bonds or places them in banks, earning a spread.
From this perspective, it looks more like a financial business that can be calculated, rather than a purely narrative-driven project.
Circle itself has also gone through a fairly typical process of "being repeatedly priced by the market." Its IPO price was 31 U.S. dollars. After listing, market sentiment was high for a time, and the stock price was quickly pushed above 200 U.S. dollars, with its market cap once surging into the tens of billions. However, it later experienced a relatively significant pullback, with considerable volatility.
On the surface, it's price fluctuations, but behind it is the market repeatedly judging: What logic should be used to value this company? Should it be viewed as a crypto industry company, a financial company, or a bit of both?
Why is Dongfang Harbor Buying Circle?
So, rather than calling this a piece of "crypto news," it's more accurate to call it news about Dongfang Harbor.
If you are somewhat familiar with Dan Bin's investment style, you would know that his approach has been relatively consistent over the years. From consumer goods to internet to tech leaders, he essentially looks for companies with relatively strong certainty that can be held long-term. His style has always been restrained, especially regarding assets with high volatility and difficult pricing, rarely taking heavy direct positions.
This is also why, despite the crypto industry being so hot in recent years, you rarely saw this type of capital directly buying Bitcoin or various tokens.
So why buy Circle this time? My understanding is: Compared to directly buying coins, a company like Circle has at least a few aspects that traditional capital can accept:
It is a listed company with financial reports and disclosures, analyzable using familiar methods.
It has revenue, and the revenue logic is relatively clear, primarily coming from interest spreads.
Its business is also quite focused, revolving entirely around stablecoins.
In other words, as a traditional investment institution, one can use their original set of methods to roughly judge whether it is a worthwhile business to participate in.
Due to my work, Attorney Honglin often exchanges ideas with many friends in the investment field. Many mainstream funds have been looking at Web3 in recent years and conducting research, but few have made large-scale moves.
The reasons are not complicated: Directly buying cryptocurrencies is too volatile; buying tokens makes fundamental analysis difficult; participating in early-stage projects involves too much information asymmetry.
Many times, they broadly agree with the direction but cannot find a convenient way to participate.
Companies like Circle, to some extent, provide a more acceptable path. You don't need to directly bear the violent fluctuations of coin prices, nor do you need to judge whether a particular project will succeed. Instead, through a company, you participate in the part of the entire industry that is growing steadily.
The Narrative of Stablecoins is Changing
Looking further, the matter of stablecoins itself is also slowly changing.
In the past, people mainly used them for trading convenience or for on-chain operations. But now, some scenarios are beginning to differ. More and more cross-border payment scenarios and online e-commerce platforms are emerging, and the use cases for stablecoins are becoming increasingly widespread. With the recent surge in AI, people are also starting to pay attention to the logic of using stablecoins when AI participates in transactions, because it is essentially a tool that can be automatically executed and settled at any time.
Therefore, regarding the stablecoin business, we don't necessarily need to give it a grand definition. Simply put, as more people use them and they are used in more places, the business becomes more like a long-term sustainable enterprise.
Behind the 3 Million Dollars: The Entry Path of Traditional Capital
Returning to the theme of the article, this 3 million U.S. dollar position itself is, of course, not important.
But it actually provides a pretty clear answer: When traditional capital seriously starts looking at Web3, its first reaction is not to buy coins, but to first look for targets that can be understood as "companies."
In other words, they are not participating in a brand new world, but are using their familiar methods to get closer to this world.
From this perspective, a company like Circle essentially plays the role of a "translator," connecting on-chain applications on one side and the traditional capital system on the other. You don't need to understand the entire industry, but at least you can understand what it does, how it makes money, and where the risks lie.
This is actually something many people underestimate. If Web3 only stays at the level of price and narrative, it is difficult for traditional capital to truly enter. But once a batch of companies that can be clearly explained and included in balance sheets begins to emerge, the way the industry participates will change.
Therefore, Dongfang Harbor may not just be buying Circle; it is essentially testing a path: not directly entering the field as a player, but first standing on the sidelines, finding a position that is understandable and can be held long-term.
Whether this path is ultimately the optimal solution remains uncertain. But what is certain is that when more and more money starts entering Web3 in this way, the industry itself will gradually become different.
