Circle logs $21.5T USDC volume; Q1 profit falls 15%

Circle reported $21.5 trillion in USDC on-chain transaction volume for the first quarter of 2026 and a 15% decline in net income from continuing operations to $55 million as the company increased stock-based compensation and invested in its Arc network effort.

USDC on-chain volume rose 263% year over year and accounted for 63% of stablecoin transaction flows during the quarter, according to one on-chain analytics provider. Total revenue and reserve income reached $694 million, a 20% increase from the prior year, while reserve income rose 17% to $653 million. Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes stock-based items and one-time charges, increased 24% to $151 million.

Operating expenses climbed 76% to $242 million. Stock-based compensation grew to $51.8 million from $12.7 million in the year-earlier quarter, driven by post-IPO equity awards and related payroll taxes. Excluding those awards, adjusted operating expenses were $136 million, up 32% year over year. Company management attributed the higher spending to investments in product, distribution and infrastructure for the Arc network and related developer tools.

On-platform metrics also advanced. USDC on platform reached $13.7 billion, up 254% year over year and representing 17.2% of total USDC supply at quarter end. Wallets holding more than $10 in USDC increased 47% to 7.2 million. Circle cited new enterprise integrations, including a treasury workflow embedding by Kyriba, and continued adoption by Polymarket as contributors to on-chain activity.

Circle disclosed a $222 million presale of ARC tokens at a $3 billion fully diluted valuation as part of its plan to support a Layer-1 network named Arc. The published whitepaper says ARC tokens will be used for governance, security and network operations. Circle said it intends to direct stablecoin revenue into seeding the Layer-1 ecosystem rather than depending on third-party rails.

Alongside Arc, the company introduced an Agent Stack that combines a command-line interface, Agent Wallets and an Agent Marketplace with its Nanopayments product to enable autonomous agents to transact in USDC across chains and payment protocols.

Jeremy Allaire, Circle co-founder and chief executive, described the quarter as “strong execution against a much bigger opportunity: the rapid convergence of AI platforms and economic operating systems into a new internet stack.” The company presented the Agent Stack as designed for programmable use cases and machine agents.

Market context showed USDC circulation at $77.0 billion, up 28% year over year, while Circle’s share of stablecoin supply declined 62 basis points to 28%. Another issuer held roughly $189 billion in stablecoin supply and reported higher Q1 profit. Some research that filters out wash and arbitrage flows found USDC surpassed that issuer in adjusted on-chain volume during the quarter.

Circle reaffirmed a multi-year USDC growth target of about 40% compound annual growth and projected full-year 2026 adjusted operating expenses between $570 million and $585 million. The company said its upcoming Form 10-Q filing in June and the Arc mainnet timeline will provide further details on network development and operating plans.