No. Not what the article implies.
Read the two quotes from the investors. They do not mention bitcoin nor crytocurrencies, intead they say "digital payments".
Apart from the investment, the big news in the article is basically
And for the first time, we're giving Circle customers the ability to hold, send, and receive US dollars as well as bitcoin -- instantly, securely, and with no fees. In addition to sending and receiving dollars, customers can also enjoy the benefits of the Bitcoin network without the risk of price volatility. [ ... ] Customers with dollar accounts gain all of the benefits of digital currency -- instant, secure and free payments to anyone in the world -- without holding or explicitly converting dollars into bitcoins. [ ... ] This way, customers can choose to view Bitcoin not as a new currency to replace the dollar, but as an Internet payment network that enables secure, instant, global and nearly free payments.
Ditto for the plans to service China: since the Chinese merchants and services cannot quote their prices in bitcoins, Circle will be a way to convert bitcoins or dollars in the US to yuan in China. Guess which of the two services may generate enough fees to repay 50 M$ of investment. (BitPay's bitcoin-to-dollar service processed ~160 M$ of payments in the whole of 2014, which may have generated 3--4 M$ of fee revenue at most.)
By the way, the article says
Dollar account balances held by Circle customers are FDIC-insured.
When Coinbase opened their exchange they too made this claim. Somewhere in their FAQ, however, it was explained that
Coinbase's bank account was FDIC insured
against failure of the bank, for the standard 250'000 $
total. They also claimed that they were licensed to operate in NY and CA, when in fact they just had assumed, erroneously, that they did not need licenses there; and that their BTC holdings were insured by a private company, when only the 5% max that they keep in their hot wallet was.
I wonder if Circle's statement above too is making full use of the wonderful flexibility of the English language?
