Circle Internet Group shares jumped roughly 10% in premarket trading on August 5, 2026, after the stablecoin issuer posted better-than-expected earnings and disclosed a roster of Wall Street institutions backing its upcoming Arc blockchain. The stock move came even as the company's headline revenue figure fell short of analyst expectations, underscoring how much investor attention has shifted toward Circle's infrastructure ambitions rather than its stablecoin float alone.
For the second quarter, Circle reported adjusted earnings per share of 18 cents, beating the 16-cent consensus estimate. Revenue and reserve income came in at $701 million, up 7% year-over-year but just below the $712 million analysts had forecast. Net income from continuing operations reached $48 million, ahead of the $43 million estimate, while adjusted EBITDA climbed 8% to $143 million.
USDC's circulating supply stood at $73.3 billion as of June 30, up 19% year-over-year but down from a 2026 peak near $80 billion in March. Onchain transaction volume tied to the stablecoin, however, told a different story: it hit $14.8 trillion for the quarter, a 151% jump. Circle also disclosed it had received approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Circle National Trust, giving the company a federal trust bank charter.
Arc Draws Its Founding Validators
The bigger story for investors was Arc, Circle's layer-1 blockchain built around USDC, which is set for public mainnet launch on September 16, 2026. Circle said more than 100 ecosystem and institutional builders are already involved, and named founding validators that read like a who's-who of traditional finance: BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, Visa, Standard Chartered, Galaxy, and MoneyGram.
BlackRock has said it plans to deploy its BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund on Arc, while DTCC is building out securities tokenization infrastructure on the network. Those commitments give Circle a concrete claim to institutional adoption at a moment when several rivals are still courting similar partners for their own settlement layers.
Circle's payments arm added its own growth figures. The Circle Payments Network posted an annualized transaction volume of $14.7 billion over the trailing 30 days, up 76% quarter-over-quarter, with 175 financial institutions now participating.
A Widening Gap With Tether on Usage, Not Size
Circle's disclosures land against a backdrop where USDC remains the clear number two stablecoin by raw supply — Tether's USDT circulates at more than $140 billion, roughly double USDC's float. But the usage gap is inverting: market data cited across recent industry analysis shows USDC accounted for close to 70% of adjusted stablecoin transaction volume in the first half of 2026, compared with roughly 25% for USDT. That divergence between supply and velocity is part of why Circle's pitch to Wall Street has centered on Arc as settlement rails rather than USDC as a static reserve asset.
Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire framed the quarter as a shift from experimentation to production use. "Institutions using USDC today...aren't piloting, they are expanding," Allaire said, pointing to the validator lineup and CPN's institutional count as evidence that the network effects Circle has pursued since USDC's launch are starting to compound.
With Arc's mainnet six weeks away, the next test for Circle will be whether committed validators translate into real settlement volume once the network goes live, and whether that activity can offset the kind of revenue miss that briefly clouded an otherwise strong quarter.
