Circle stock jumps 10% as Arc lands BlackRock, Visa
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- Circle Internet shares climbed about 10% in premarket trading after Q2 adjusted EPS of 18 cents topped the 16-cent consensus, even as revenue rose 7% year-over-year to $701 million, missing the $712 million estimate.
- USDC circulation reached $73.3 billion at the end of June, up 19% year-over-year but down from its 2026 peak of nearly $80 billion, while onchain transaction volume surged 151% to $14.8 trillion in the quarter.
- Circle said its Arc blockchain network is set to launch its public mainnet on Sept. 16, with more than 100 ecosystem and institutional builders developing on it and a founding validator set that includes 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 — moves Circle framed as positioning Arc as rails for tokenized assets and institutional payments.
- Circle Payments Network (CPN) 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 received approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Circle National Trust, making it a stablecoin issuer operating under a federal trust bank charter.
- CEO Jeremy Allaire characterized the quarter as reflecting a slower crypto market and the current rate environment, but said institutions using USDC — naming BlackRock, BNY and Standard Chartered — "aren't piloting, they are expanding."
Why it matters: The Arc validator lineup — BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, Visa — gives Circle's layer-1 blockchain a credible institutional foundation ahead of its Sept. 16 mainnet, moving tokenized Treasury funds and securities settlement from pilots to production rails. Pairing that with an OCC-granted federal trust charter positions Circle as a federally supervised stablecoin bank, not just a crypto-native issuer, tightening the link between traditional finance and onchain dollar infrastructure.
