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Circle’s 2026 Strategy: Building Internet Financial Platform Through Arc and Stablecoins

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21Shares Introduces JitoSOL ETP to Offer Staking Rewards via Solana

TLDR:

  • Arc testnet processed 150 million transactions in 90 days with 0.5-second average settlement times. 
  • USDC circulation grew 108% year-over-year, maintaining position as largest regulated dollar stablecoin. 
  • Circle Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol processed $126 billion volume across 19 connected blockchains. 
  • Circle Payments Network reached billions in annualized volume since May 2025 launch with major banks.

 

Circle has outlined its comprehensive product strategy for 2026, focusing on three interconnected pillars that aim to establish a complete internet financial infrastructure.

The company’s Chief Product and Technology Officer detailed plans encompassing blockchain infrastructure through Arc, digital assets including USDC, and applications like Circle Payments Network.

This strategy represents Circle’s effort to connect open infrastructure with liquidity and applications to support economic coordination natively online.

Arc Blockchain and Developer Tools Drive Infrastructure Layer

Circle’s Arc blockchain serves as the foundation for its internet financial platform vision. The Layer-1 blockchain launched its public testnet on October 28, 2025, processing over 150 million transactions in its first 90 days.

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Nearly 1.5 million transacting wallets participated during this period, with transactions settling in approximately 0.5 seconds on average.

Circle described Arc as designed to provide businesses and financial institutions with a trusted foundation for internet-native economic coordination.

The network features stablecoin-based transaction fees and deterministic sub-second finality for every transaction. Privacy features support institutional requirements around governance and compliance.

Developer infrastructure plays a crucial role in Circle’s platform strategy. Circle Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) has processed $126 billion in cumulative volume as of December 2025. The protocol connects 19 of the 30 blockchains where USDC is natively available.

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Circle Gateway provides unified USDC balances that are chain-abstracted, enabling instant access to crosschain liquidity.

The company introduced Build with AI at the end of 2025, helping developers generate code through a chatbot. App Kits will unify fragmented ecosystems into a single SDK experience for faster application development.

Digital Assets and Payment Applications Complete Platform Stack

USDC experienced 108% year-over-year circulation growth, establishing itself as the world’s largest regulated dollar stablecoin.

Circle noted the stablecoin sees growing usage across exchanges, fintechs, DeFi applications, payment providers, and enterprises worldwide. The company emphasized expanding to chains that matter most to builders through a regulatory-first approach.

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Circle’s tokenized money market fund, USYC, reached $1.6 billion in assets under management as of January 27, 2026.

The yield-bearing asset offers 24/7 near-instant redemptions at scale across major ecosystems including Solana and BNB Chain. Circle aims to integrate USYC into onchain treasury, collateral, and capital markets workflows during 2026.

xReserve allows blockchain teams to launch USDC-backed stablecoins through onchain reserve contracts. This service extends Circle’s asset layer beyond company-issued stablecoins.

Partners can rely on an attestation service to launch stablecoins that interoperate with USDC across supported chains.

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Circle Payments Network (CPN) launched in May 2025, combining traditional fiat payment rails with stablecoin programmability. The network has enrolled major financial institutions and reached billions in annualized transaction volume.

CPN enables near-instant money movement across fiat and crypto payouts, intercompany transfers, and merchant acceptance.

StableFX operates on the Arc Testnet, allowing vetted institutions to trade stablecoin foreign exchange pairs with instant onchain settlement.

Circle stated the platform brings seamless value conversion across currencies onchain as stablecoin-powered payments continue to expand.

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The company plans to deepen StableFX coverage through partnerships in the Circle Partner Stablecoins program during 2026.

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ME Token Slumps After Magic Eden Announces Buybacks, Staking Rewards

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ME Token Slumps After Magic Eden Announces Buybacks, Staking Rewards


The former NFT marketplace said it will allocate revenue to the ME ecosystem, including USDC rewards paid out to stakers.

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Solana (SOL) Plunges Below $100, Bitcoin (BTC) Recovers From 15-Month Low: Market Watch

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BTCUSD Feb 4. Source: TradingView


Meanwhile, HASH and HYPE have declined the most over the past 24 hours after charting impressive gains lately.

Bitcoin’s adverse price actions as of late worsened yesterday when the asset tumbled to its lowest positions since early November 2024 at $73,000 before recovering by a few grand.

Most altcoins followed suit with enhanced volatility, but some, such as SOL, HYPE, and CC, have been hit harder than others.

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BTC’s Latest Rollercoaster

It was just a week ago when the primary cryptocurrency challenged the $90,000 resistance ahead of the first FOMC meeting for the year. After it became official that the Fed won’t cut the rates again, BTC remained sluggish at first but started to decline in the following hours.

The escalating tension in the Middle East was also blamed for another crash that took place on Thursday when bitcoin plunged to $81,000. It bounced off to $84,000 on Friday but tumbled once again on Saturday, this time to under $75,000. Another recovery attempt followed on Monday, only to be rejected at $79,000.

Tuesday brought the latest crash, this time to a 15-month low of $73,000. It has rebounded since then to just over $76,000, but it’s still 3% down on the day. Moreover, it has lost 14% of its value weekly and a whopping 18% monthly.

Its market capitalization has plummeted to $1.525 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the alts has declined to 57.3%.

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BTCUSD Feb 4. Source: TradingView
BTCUSD Feb 4. Source: TradingView

SOL Below $100

Most larger-cap altcoins have felt the consequences of the violent market crash lately. Ethereum went from over $3,000 to $2,100 in the span of a week, before bouncing to $2,280 as of now. BNB is down to $760, while SOL has plummeted to under $100 after a 7% daily decline.

Even the recent high-flyer HYPE has retraced hard daily. The token is down by 11% to $33. CC and ZEC are also deep in the red, while XMR has gained the most from the larger caps.

The cumulative market cap of all crypto assets has seen more than $70 billion erased in a day and is down to $2.65 trillion on CG.

Cryptocurrency Market Overview Feb 4. Source: QuantifyCrypto
Cryptocurrency Market Overview Feb 4. Source: QuantifyCrypto

 

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Pumpfun Unveils Investment Arm and $3 Million Hackathon

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Pumpfun Unveils Investment Arm and $3 Million Hackathon


PUMP rallied as much as 10% but erased its gains as crypto markets dipped.

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Spot Bitcoin ETF AUM Hits Lowest Level Since April 2025

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Spot Bitcoin ETF AUM Hits Lowest Level Since April 2025

Assets in spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs slipped below $100 billion on Tuesday following a fresh $272 million in outflows.

According to data from SoSoValue, the move marked the first time spot Bitcoin ETF assets under management have fallen below that level since April 2025, after peaking at about $168 billion in October

The drop came amid a broader crypto market sell-off, with Bitcoin sliding below $74,000 on Tuesday. The global cryptocurrency market capitalization fell from $3.11 trillion to $2.64 trillion over the past week, according to CoinGecko.

Altcoin funds secure modest inflows

The latest outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs followed a brief rebound in flows on Monday, when the products attracted $562 million in net inflows.

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Still, Bitcoin funds resumed losses on Tuesday, pushing year-to-date outflows to almost $1.3 billion, coming in line with ongoing market volatility.

Spot Bitcoin ETF flows since Jan. 26, 2026. Source: SoSoValue

By contrast, ETFs tracking altcoins such as Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP) and Solana (SOL) recorded modest inflows of $14 million, $19.6 million and $1.2 million, respectively.

Is institutional adoption moving beyond ETFs?

The ongoing sell-off in Bitcoin ETFs comes as BTC trades below the ETF creation cost basis of $84,000, suggesting new ETF shares are being issued at a loss and placing pressure on fund flows.

Market observers say that the slump is unlikely to trigger further mass sell-offs in ETFs.

“My guess is vast majority of assets in spot BTC ETFs stay put regardless,” ETF analyst Nate Geraci wrote on X on Monday.

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Source: Nate Geraci

Thomas Restout, CEO of institutional liquidity provider B2C2, echoed the sentiment, noting that institutional ETF investors are generally resilient. Still, he hinted that a shift toward onchain trading may be underway.

Related: VistaShares launches Treasury ETF with options-based Bitcoin exposure

“The benefit of institutions coming in and buying ETFs is they’re far more resilient. They will sit on their views and positions for longer,” Restout said in a Rulematch Spot On podcast on Monday.

“I think the next level of transformation is institutions actually trading crypto, rather than just using securitized ETFs. We’re expecting the next wave of institutions to be the ones trading the underlying assets directly,” he noted.