Circle

Circle Internet Group is a US public company whose main business is issuing USDC, a dollar stablecoin, and EURC, a euro stablecoin. It makes most of its money from interest on the assets that back those tokens and shares a large part of it with the exchanges and apps that distribute USDC. Around that core it sells payment and developer services: the Circle Payments Network for banks and payment firms, a cross-chain transfer tool called CCTP, wallet and developer APIs, and its own blockchain, Arc.

Jeremy Allaire and P. Sean Neville founded the company in 2013, according to its prospectus. Allaire is co-founder, chief executive and chairman. In September 2026 Circle said its chief financial officer, Jeremy Fox-Geen, would step down by the end of December 2026 or earlier if a successor is named. The company lists its principal executive office as One World Trade Center in New York.

Circle's Class A shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL in June 2025, after an initial public offering priced at $31.00 a share. Being listed means it files quarterly and annual reports with the SEC, including audited financial statements. That is a different level of disclosure from a private issuer, though it covers the company as a whole, not each day's reserves.

USDC is minted when a customer of Circle Mint, Circle's service for businesses, sends dollars and receives tokens, and it is burned when that customer sends tokens back for dollars. The prospectus describes this as one-for-one minting and redemption for Circle Mint customers, honoured except where law, a court order or suspected fraud prevents it. In the second quarter of 2026 Circle reported $83 billion of USDC minted and $87 billion redeemed.

Individuals do not usually deal with Circle Mint. They buy and sell USDC through an exchange, broker or wallet, at whatever price and fee that platform sets. We could not open Circle Mint's own fee page, so this profile does not state a minimum or a fee for direct redemption; check the current Mint terms before relying on that route.

The two legal issuers matter if you ever need to make a claim. USDC is issued by Circle Internet Financial, LLC in the US and by Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS in France; EURC is issued only by the French company. Circle's Q2 2026 release also says New York regulators approved a limited purpose trust company, Circle New York Trust, and press reports of the bank approval say USDC issuance is set to move to that New York entity.

Circle states that USDC is backed by cash and short-dated US government assets. At 31 March 2025, the latest breakdown in its prospectus, about 90% of reserves sat in the Circle Reserve Fund, a government money market fund, with the fund's assets in custody at The Bank of New York Mellon. The remainder is held as cash at banks.

Circle describes three layers of checking: daily transparency into the reserve fund, monthly assurance reports from what the prospectus calls a Big Four accounting firm, and annual audits of the company's financial statements. A monthly assurance report is an attestation of balances on set dates, not an audit of the reserve itself, and an audit of a listed company does not guarantee the value of a token. Circle's transparency page blocked our automated access, so this profile does not repeat a current reserve breakdown.

Reserves earn interest, and that is the business. In the second quarter of 2026 Circle reported $668 million of reserve income at a 3.5% average return, and $410 million of distribution and transaction costs, much of it paid to partners who hold or promote USDC. Net income from continuing operations was $48 million. Because income tracks short-term interest rates, lower rates cut Circle's revenue even when USDC grows.

On 10 July 2026 Circle received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to open First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., a national trust bank that operates as Circle National Trust. It had applied on 30 June 2025 and received conditional approval in December 2025, according to The Block.

The charter is narrower than the word bank suggests. Coverage of the approval says the bank opens by providing fiduciary custody of digital assets to Circle and its affiliates, with management of the USDC reserve left to a later phase. A national trust bank does not take deposits or make loans, and USDC holders do not become bank depositors or gain deposit insurance. The real change is that a federal bank supervisor now examines part of Circle's group.

Circle was not alone. The same OCC round included conditional approvals for Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos. Senator Elizabeth Warren has argued that the OCC is granting these charters to firms that do not qualify under the National Bank Act, so the legal footing could still be challenged.

Circle's developer documentation lists native USDC on 38 mainnet blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, OP Mainnet, Polygon PoS, Avalanche, Stellar, Sui, Aptos, NEAR, the XRP Ledger and Circle's own Arc. Native means Circle issues and redeems that version. Bridged versions created by third parties, often labelled USDC.e, are not Circle's liability, which is why searches comparing the two are common.

Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, CCTP, moves USDC between supported chains by burning tokens on one chain and minting the same amount on another, instead of locking them in a bridge contract. Circle's docs describe it as a permissionless onchain utility and say any fee is deducted from the amount transferred. For how CCTP compares with other bridges, see the rating card.

Arc, Circle's own layer-1 chain, opened its public mainnet on 16 September 2026 with a permissioned group of validators, according to The Block, and network fees on it are paid in USDC. Circle minted 10 billion ARC tokens at launch while saying that the mint is not a commitment to launch the token publicly.

Circle reports several measures of how widely USDC is used, and they explain why the company spends so much on distribution. In the second quarter of 2026 it counted $14.8 trillion of onchain USDC transaction volume, up 151% on a year earlier, 7.0 million wallets it classes as meaningful, and a 27% share of the stablecoin market at quarter end. USDC held inside Circle's own platform infrastructure reached $12.4 billion.

The Circle Payments Network connects banks and payment companies that settle cross-border payments in USDC. Circle said it had 175 enrolled financial institutions at the end of June 2026 and $14.7 billion of annualised transaction volume over the trailing 30 days, up 76% on the previous quarter. The planned purchase of Tazapay, a Singapore payments firm that already sends about 60% of its volume in stablecoins, is meant to add local payout rails in more than 100 markets, subject to approval by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

These services are aimed at businesses and developers. For an individual, Circle mostly shows up as the issuer behind the USDC balance in an exchange account or wallet, not as a provider with its own consumer app.

Yes. Circle's USDC risk disclosures say it issues and redeems USDC under a blacklisting policy and reserves the right to block transfers to and from an address in extraordinary circumstances under that policy, including in response to valid government orders. A blocked address cannot move its USDC, and Circle may also freeze USDC sent to or from such an address by a Circle account holder.

Circle has used this power publicly, for example in 2022 on addresses tied to Tornado Cash after US Treasury sanctions, as The Block reported. It is the same trade-off every issuer-run stablecoin makes. If you need a dollar token that no company can freeze, USDC is not that, and neither is Tether's USDT, whose terms give its issuer similar powers.

USDC's risks are mostly about where the money sits and who controls access to it.

• Bank and fund risk: reserves are held in a money market fund and at banks. In March 2023 more than $3 billion of reserves were at Silicon Valley Bank when it failed, and USDC traded below one dollar for a time.
• Access risk: only Circle Mint customers redeem directly; everyone else relies on an exchange or app to exit at one dollar.
• Freezing: Circle can block addresses under its policy and in response to government orders.
• Bridged tokens: USDC.e and other wrapped versions depend on a third-party bridge, not on Circle.
• Business risk: Circle's income falls with interest rates and depends on partner payouts, which matters to shareholders more than to holders, but a weaker issuer is never good for a token.

Most people get USDC by buying it on an exchange or through a wallet that offers swaps or card purchases. Check the network before you withdraw: an address on Solana and an address on Ethereum are not interchangeable, and sending to the wrong chain can strand funds. Platforms set their own fees and minimums. For how USDC compares with other stablecoins, see the rating card.

To get out, sell USDC for dollars on an exchange and withdraw to your bank, or swap it for another asset. Businesses with a Circle Mint account can redeem directly. Moving USDC between chains through CCTP keeps it as native USDC; moving it through a third-party bridge may leave you with a wrapped version instead.

Circle's official presence is circle.com, its investor site at investor.circle.com, its developer docs at developers.circle.com, its X account (@circle) and its LinkedIn page. Retail questions about a USDC balance usually belong with the exchange or wallet that holds it, because Circle has no account relationship with most holders and cannot reverse an onchain transfer.

Fake USDC tokens, airdrops and support accounts appear regularly. Check a token's contract address against Circle's published list before accepting it as USDC, and treat any unsolicited message offering to unfreeze or recover USDC for a fee as a likely scam.

The dated milestones below come from Circle's SEC filings and press coverage of them.

• 2013: founded by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville.
• March 2023: Silicon Valley Bank fails with more than $3 billion of USDC reserves on deposit; USDC briefly trades below one dollar.
• June 2025: IPO on the New York Stock Exchange at $31.00 a share under the ticker CRCL; application for a national trust bank filed on 30 June.
• December 2025: conditional OCC approval for the trust bank.
• July 2026: final OCC approval for Circle National Trust; NYDFS approval for Circle New York Trust reported in the Q2 results.
• September 2026: Arc public mainnet opens; agreement to acquire Tazapay; CFO transition announced.