Circle shares fall 3% despite earnings beat as stablecoin issuer misses on revenue
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- Circle Internet shares fell 3% in premarket after initially jumping 10%, as Q2 adjusted EPS of 18 cents beat the 16-cent consensus but revenue of $701 million missed the $712 million forecast (up 7% year-over-year).
- USDC circulation grew 19% year-over-year to $73.3 billion at quarter-end, though down from its 2026 peak of nearly $80 billion; onchain transaction volume surged 151% to $14.8 trillion during the quarter.
- Arc, Circle's layer-1 blockchain, will launch its public mainnet on September 16, with more than 100 institutional builders developing on the network and a founding validator set including BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, Visa, Standard Chartered, Galaxy, and MoneyGram.
- BlackRock plans to deploy its BUIDL tokenized U.S. Treasury fund on Arc, while DTCC is building infrastructure to tokenize securities held at its depository.
- Circle Payments Network hit $14.7 billion in annualized transaction volume over the trailing 30 days, up 76% from the prior quarter, with 175 financial institutions now participating.
- Circle National Trust received OCC approval to establish a federally chartered trust bank, placing Circle under direct federal oversight as a stablecoin issuer.
- CEO Jeremy Allaire said institutions using USDC — including BlackRock, BNY, and Standard Chartered — "aren't piloting, they are expanding," despite a slowed crypto market and unfavorable rate environment.
Why it matters: Circle beat EPS by 2 cents but missed revenue by $11 million, and the 3% premarket drop after an initial 10% pop shows investors anchoring on the top-line shortfall. The selloff overshadows concrete structural milestones: Arc's September 16 mainnet launch, 100+ institutional builders, and a federal trust bank charter from the OCC — markers of deepening institutional rails rather than weakening fundamentals.
