Circle Shares Climb After Mixed Results and Fresh Arc Blockchain Support

TL;DR:

• Circle reported $701 million in revenue for the second quarter of 2026, falling short of Wall Street’s estimate of $712 million.
• Net income from continuing operations reached $48 million, beating analyst expectations and marking a $530 million year-over-year increase.
• Arc, Circle’s blockchain, will launch its public mainnet on September 16, with validators including BlackRock, Visa, and Mastercard.

Circle reported total revenue and reserve income of $701 million in the second quarter of 2026, a figure that came in slightly below the analyst consensus from Wall Street, estimated at $712 million according to data compiled by Yahoo Finance. Despite the mixed result, the company’s shares saw considerable volatility in pre-market trading on Wednesday: they surged as much as 10% initially before pulling back roughly 3%.

Reserve income reached $668 million, a 5% year-over-year increase driven primarily by a 25% rise in average USDC circulation. Net income from continuing operations came in at $48 million, beating the $43 million estimate and representing a year-over-year jump of $530 million. Adjusted EBITDA grew 8% to $143 million.

Circle Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/jNAzvrQD46

— Circle (@circle) August 5, 2026

USDC, the dollar-backed stablecoin issued by the company, closed June with a circulation of $73.3 billion, 19% higher than a year earlier, though below the peak of nearly $80 billion reached in 2026. On-chain transaction volume surged 151% to $14.8 trillion during the quarter.

Arc and the Institutional Backing Surrounding Circle

The report also provided the most detailed update to date on Arc, the company’s layer-1 blockchain whose public mainnet will launch on September 16. More than 100 institutional and ecosystem developers are already building on the network. The founding validator set includes BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, Visa, Standard Chartered, Galaxy, MoneyGram, and other top-tier financial firms. BlackRock plans to deploy its tokenized Treasury bond fund BUIDL on the network, while DTCC is working on infrastructure to tokenize securities held in its depository.

The company also reported progress on the Circle Payments Network, which recorded an annualized transaction volume of $14.7 billion over the past 30 days, 76% more than the previous quarter, with the participation of 175 financial institutions.

“The institutions using USDC today, such as BlackRock, BNY, and Standard Chartered, are not in a pilot phase — they are scaling,” said CEO Jeremy Allaire in a statement. The company also recently received approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the United States to establish the Circle National Trust, making it a stablecoin issuer with a federal trust bank charter.