Stablecoin issuer Circle has raised $222 million in a private presale of its Arc token, the native token of its institutional stablecoin-focused Layer 1 blockchain.

 

The presale was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which invested $75 million. Investors, including BlackRock, Apollo Global Management, Intercontinental Exchange, SBI Group, Janus Henderson Investors, Standard Chartered, General Catalyst, Marshall Wace, ARK Invest, IDG Capital, Haun Ventures, and crypto exchange Bullish, also participated in the funding round.

 

Speaking in an exclusive interview with CNBC, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company was building an operating system with multiple stakeholders and major companies that would run the infrastructure supporting the network and contribute to its governance.

 

Allaire also likened the Arc blockchain to a mobile operating system or cloud platform, saying the network was designed to allow major companies to build and operate infrastructure on the chain while participating in governance.

 

The Arc token has an initial total supply of 10 billion tokens. Circle has allocated 60% of the token supply to participants building, using, and contributing to the Arc blockchain. Circle itself will hold a 25% stake, enabling it to act as a validator for the network, while the remaining 15% has been allocated to a long-term reserve. The fundraising gives Arc a fully diluted network valuation of $3 billion. 

 

The launch of the Arc blockchain is aimed at expanding Circle’s business beyond USDC issuance, allowing the company to generate additional revenue from its stablecoin operations while owning and controlling the settlement and distribution infrastructure on which the USDC stablecoin operates. This would reduce Circle’s reliance on blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana, as well as its dependence on Coinbase.

 

Circle Publishes Its First-Quarter Stablecoin Report

Alongside the announcement of its successful presale round, Circle also released its first quarter report for this year, which highlighted strong momentum and adoption of its stablecoin.

 

According to the report, total revenue and reserve income for its USDC stablecoin reached $694 million, marking a 20% year over year increase. USDC on-chain transaction volume also surged to $21.5 trillion in the last quarter, representing a 263% year over year increase.

 

 

Although net income from continuing operations fell 15%, USDC in circulation grew 28% year over year to $77.0 billion by the end of the quarter. The report also highlighted the introduction of Agent Stack, a platform designed by Circle that allows AI agents to conduct autonomous financial transactions using USDC.

 

 

In a Thursday post on X, stablecoin issuer Circle announced that it will be launching cirBTC, its own version of wrapped Bitcoin for institutional markets.

 

 

cirBTC will maintain a 1:1 backing with Bitcoin and will be launched on Ethereum as well as on Circle’s Layer-1 Arc blockchain. Circle also says the yet-to-be-launched crypto asset will be credible, claiming it was designed with the same foundations as USDC and EURC.

 

Despite the existence of dozens of wrapped Bitcoin products in the crypto market, Circle says several features set cirBTC apart from other versions of wrapped Bitcoin:

• Institutional-grade global standard: cirBTC is well-suited for over-the-counter (OTC) desks, market makers, and lending protocols, as well as other institutional crypto users seeking a neutral, secure, and high-performance tokenized version of Bitcoin.
• Verifiability: cirBTC reserves can be independently verified onchain in real time by any counterparty.
• Interoperable infrastructure: cirBTC is designed to be multi-chain compatible. Although it will launch on Ethereum and Arc first, support is expected to expand to additional chains over time.

 

Circle Joins the Wrapped Bitcoin Race

With cirBTC now in place, Circle will compete with the likes of BitGo, Coinbase, and Ren Protocol, whose wrapped versions of Bitcoin have long dominated the crypto and DeFi space.

 

BitGo, in combination with Kyber Network and Ren Protocol, launched its own version of wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) in 2018. WBTC was introduced with the goal of bringing Bitcoin liquidity into Ethereum and DeFi protocols, and since its launch, it has been widely used for DeFi lending, borrowing, and trading.

 

WBTC currently holds a dominant market share of about 85% of the total wrapped Bitcoin market, with a market capitalization of approximately $7.9 billion, a 1:1 backing with Bitcoin, and roughly 119,000 WBTC in circulation.

 

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase also launched cbBTC, its own version of wrapped Bitcoin, in 2024. cbBTC was introduced with the goal of providing institutional-grade, exchange-native wrapped Bitcoin that would serve as an alternative to BitGo’s WBTC while tightly integrating into Coinbase services and the Base ecosystem.

 

cbBTC currently has a market capitalization of about $5.9 billion, a circulating supply of approximately 88,000 cbBTC tokens, and a 1:1 backing with Bitcoin.

 

To bring Bitcoin liquidity into DeFi, several other crypto exchanges have also created their own versions of wrapped Bitcoin, including Binance Wrapped BTC (BTCB), Kraken Wrapped BTC (kBTC), and OKX Wrapped BTC (XBTC).