Overview
- Circle's Arc public mainnet is set to launch on September 16, featuring eleven validators.
- The company reported revenue and reserve income of $701 million, with a net income of $48 million, a significant turnaround from a $482 million loss last year.
- Circle has recently received final approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a national trust bank.
Circle is preparing to unveil the public mainnet of its Arc blockchain on September 16 and has announced a founding validator group primarily composed of traditional financial institutions, coinciding with the release of its Q2 results.
The validators securing the network alongside Circle include BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, and Visa. BlackRock is anticipated to launch its BUIDL tokenized money market fund on Arc, while DTCC plans to enable the tokenization of its custodied assets, expected by the latter half of 2027.
Circle Q2: Continued growth and profitability, expanding USDC utility, liquidity, and partnerships.
OCC National Trust Bank secured. Arc mainnet launches Sept 16, with major firms joining Arc. CPN seeing rapid quarter growth.
The internet financial system is arriving.… pic.twitter.com/m7K4oG8FMx
— Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc (@jerallaire) August 5, 2026
Currently, Arc is in a private mainnet phase with over 100 builders contributing. Circle's CEO, Jeremy Allaire, mentioned during the Q2 earnings call that the testnet has successfully processed more than 500 million transactions across nearly 3 million wallets. He described the validator line-up as "a cohort of network validators no other network can match." Initial DeFi protocols like Aave, Morpho, and Uniswap will be accessible from day one, with Binance Wallet, Kraken, Ledger, and MetaMask facilitating access. Users will pay gas fees using Circle's stablecoin, USDC.
Circle’s Financial Performance
Circle reported total revenue and reserve income of $701 million, marking a 7% increase year-over-year and slightly exceeding the prior quarter, although still below the $770 million recorded in Q4 2025. Reserve income rose to $668 million, an increase of 5%, while the reserve return rate decreased by 66 basis points to 3.5%.
The company posted a net income of $48 million, a notable recovery from a $482 million loss during the same period last year, which was heavily impacted by IPO stock compensation. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter reached $143 million, reflecting an 8% growth.
By the end of the quarter, the circulation of USDC stood at $73.3 billion, up 19%, and on-chain transaction volume soared to $14.8 trillion, a 151% increase. However, Circle's market share of the fiat-backed stablecoin sector fell to 27%.
During the earnings call, Allaire noted that "digital asset markets themselves have continued to see significant weakness." He also confirmed that Circle's distribution agreement with Coinbase has been "renewed on its existing terms," maintaining the previous arrangement that accounted for $410 million in distribution and transaction costs this quarter.
Regulatory Approvals and Future Outlook
In the previous month, Circle obtained final approval from the OCC to create Circle National Trust, positioning it as one of the first stablecoin issuers to secure a federal bank charter, along with a limited purpose trust charter from New York regulators. This federal charter permits regulated digital asset custody and allows Circle to manage the USDC reserve independently. Allaire stated that this infrastructure bank “becomes a way to project Circle's infrastructure into global markets for payments, for capital markets, and for the use of digital dollars in corporations worldwide.”
The Circle Payments Network achieved an annualized transaction volume of $14.7 billion, a 76% increase quarter-over-quarter, with 175 financial institutions participating. Allaire noted that this figure had risen to $23 billion by July 31.
Circle has nearly doubled its full-year revenue guidance, now projecting between $310 million and $330 million, up from a previous estimate of $150 million to $170 million. This revision is partly attributed to recognized revenue from the ARC token presale.