circle

Grayscale's research director Zach Pandl stated that in the context of rising inflation in the United States, the Federal Reserve may maintain a high interest rate policy for a long time, which will have three core impacts on the cryptocurrency market. He believes that as the U.S. CPI approaches 4%, the new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh has almost no room for interest rate cuts, and the market currently expects the first rate cut to be delayed until September 2027. Grayscale pointed out that long-term high interest rates will put pressure on "currency devaluation trades" such as Bitcoin. Since Bitcoin, like gold, is a non-yielding asset, higher real interest rates will increase the opportunity cost of holding dollar-denominated assets. However, it remains optimistic about Bitcoin's long-term prospects and believes that regulatory benefits such as the CLARITY Act can partially offset the related pressures. In addition, it believes that a high interest rate environment will accelerate the tokenization of fixed income assets. Currently, the yields on dollar-denominated fixed income products are higher than those of most DeFi yields; for example, the USDC lending rate on Aave is about 3.6%, while the yield on short-term corporate bonds is about 4.5%. Grayscale also stated that stablecoin issuers will benefit from high interest rates. Since the GENIUS Act prohibits stablecoins from paying interest to users, issuers can retain the income from reserve assets. It estimates that for every 25 basis point increase in short-term rates, Circle's revenue will increase by approximately $190 million.

ARK Invest, led by Cathie Wood, submitted its Q1 2026 13F report, which shows a significant increase in holdings of Circle, Robinhood, Bitmine, and Bullish, while reducing its position in Coinbase.Specifically, ARK Invest significantly increased its holdings in Circle (CRCL) by approximately 368,000 shares, raising its total to about 4.5 million shares, with a market value of approximately $430 million, accounting for 3.34%; it also increased its holdings in Robinhood (HOOD) by about 1.19 million shares, with a market value of approximately $416 million; Bullish (BLSH) and Bitmine (BMNR) saw increases of about 1.74 million shares and 240,000 shares, respectively. Additionally, ARK Invest reduced its position in Coinbase (COIN), currently holding about 2.37 million shares, with a market value of approximately $414 million, accounting for 3.22%.

BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, submitted its Q1 2026 13F report, showing a significant adjustment in its holdings of crypto-related stocks.Among them, it increased its holdings in MicroStrategy (MSTR) by approximately 3.14 million shares, raising its total to 17.75 million shares, with a market value of about $2.216 billion; it increased its holdings in Bitmine (BMNR) by approximately 2.02 million shares, bringing its total to about 11.08 million shares, with a market value of about $219 million.At the same time, it reduced its holdings in Coinbase (COIN) by approximately 330,000 shares, bringing its total to about 16.74 million shares, with a market value of about $2.924 billion; it reduced its holdings in Circle (CRCL) by approximately 610,000 shares, bringing its total to about 5.06 million shares, with a market value of about $483 million.

The Web3 asset data platform RootData has outlined 104 partners of Arc, covering six core sectors: asset issuance, infrastructure, developer tools, trading, financial services, and payments. Compared to most public chains that first develop a developer ecosystem and then seek commercialization scenarios, Arc's path is clearly more aligned with the real financial circulation network. At the asset issuance level, stablecoin issuers such as AllUnity, BDACS, Bitso/Juno, and Stablecorp, as well as tokenized asset players like Centrifuge, Securitize, and WisdomTree have entered the scene, indicating that Arc prioritizes solving the "on-chain asset supply" issue, bringing dollars, bonds, and securities onto the chain. At the infrastructure level, partners like Blockdaemon, Chainalysis, Elliptic, QuickNode, and DRPC provide node services, compliance analysis, and on-chain data support. This means Arc is preparing for institutional funds, rather than following the typical Crypto public chain model of "growth first, compliance later." At the developer tools level, partners such as Axelar, Wormhole, Chainlink, MetaMask, Fireblocks, Privy, Alchemy, LayerZero, and TRM Labs are concentrated, essentially lowering the migration costs for institutions and developers, allowing funds, wallets, cross-chain, and compliance tools to be directly in place. At the trading level, institutions like Coinbase, Bybit, Kraken, Robinhood, Galaxy Digital, and B2C2 are responsible for secondary market liquidity and price discovery. The payment layer is heavily integrated by Visa, Mastercard, PhotonPay, Nuvei, EBANX, and Ramp. At the financial services level, firms like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, State Street, Aave, Maple Finance, Morpho, and BitGo are appearing simultaneously, indicating that Arc has begun to bridge traditional banking, on-chain lending, and custody systems. On the surface, Arc appears to be a new public chain, but from an ecological structure perspective, it will serve as the new financial infrastructure for the Circle stablecoin era, directly emphasizing USDC gas fees, sub-second final settlement, compliance privacy, and native CCTP integration, aiming to directly penetrate real capital flows and attempt to become SWIFT + Stripe + DTCC. Related compilation: Arc Web3 Partner Network Compilation (continuously updated) Cryptocurrency projects actively showcasing their partner networks have become a key way to enhance transparency and market trust. It is reported that RootData welcomes Web3 projects to claim their information and continues to track and open more project business relationship disclosure channels. The platform has continuously released multiple editions of the cryptocurrency project ecosystem map, nominating Web3 ecosystem partners for upstream clients like Visa, Mastercard, and Coinbase. If you wish to nominate your project in future ecosystem maps, please fill out the [RootData 2026 Industry Ecosystem Mapping] form to supplement your important clients and partners.

According to SolanaFloor, Circle has issued approximately 500 million USDC on the Solana network in the past 24 hours.

According to CoinDesk, crypto wallet infrastructure Turnkey has completed a $12.5 million strategic financing, bringing the total funding to over $65 million. Major investors include Archetype, Circle Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.The new funds will primarily be used for the development and release of the digital asset security computing product Turnkey Verifiable Cloud.

USDC issuer Circle announced further deepening of its cooperation with Hyperliquid, becoming the technical deployment partner for USDC on Hyperliquid and positioning USDC as an Aligned Quote Asset. Hyperliquid, as a high-performance on-chain trading platform, is expanding from perpetual contracts to outcome-based markets, with USDC continuing to serve as the primary collateral and quote asset to support liquidity, collateral management, and cross-chain capital flows.Circle is responsible for providing reliable minting, redemption, and cross-chain transfer infrastructure, allowing USDC to play a more central role in new markets. Circle also announced an increase in financial investment in the Hyperliquid ecosystem: following the initial purchase of HYPE tokens in September 2025, it has staked an additional 500,000 HYPE tokens, further aligning the interests of both parties and moving towards becoming a validator.

Bernstein stated that it maintains a target price of $190 for Circle (CRCL): Although the decline in interest rates led to a quarter-over-quarter drop in reserve income of 11%, Q1 revenue of $694 million was slightly below expectations, but adjusted EBITDA reached $151 million, exceeding consensus by about 10%. Analysts pointed out that Circle's $222 million ARC token presale, completed at a fully diluted valuation of $3 billion, along with robust growth in USDC supply reaching $77 billion (a year-on-year increase of 28%), provides a buffer for the company.According to Gate's market data, Circle's stock closed at $131.76 on Monday, with the target price implying about a 44% upside. Bernstein reiterated that the upcoming launch of the Arc Layer 1 mainnet, the expansion of the payment network, and its leading position in AI agent payments (x402 standard) will support the long-term growth of USDC and maintain the fiscal year 2026 guidance unchanged.

According to GMGN monitoring, Circle surged 15% after earnings and today released Circle Agent Stack, launching financial infrastructure for the agent economy, which includes AI Agent and Nanopayments (USDC nano payments).The x402 ecological project Meridian (MRDN), as one of the early integrators of Circle's AI Agent payment infrastructure, followed up with a post stating "now available on Meridian," which was retweeted by Circle's official account. Coupled with the hot narrative of AI Agent + USDC nano payments, its token MRDN saw a significant increase, with a 24-hour rise exceeding 160% at one point, and a market cap reported at 28 million USD.ChainCatcher reminds users that meme coin trading is highly volatile, largely relying on market sentiment and speculative concepts, and has no actual value or use cases; investors should be aware of the risks.

According to SolanaFloor, Circle has issued approximately 250 million USDC on the Solana network in the past 24 hours.

According to BIT analysis, Circle's stock price surged 16% overnight and is currently approaching the March 2026 high. This week may become a key point for the advancement of the CLARITY Act. The market generally believes that Circle is the most direct beneficiary, and this increase also reflects that the market is pricing in expectations that regulatory uncertainties are likely to ease. It is worth noting that the overall market capitalization of USDC has maintained steady growth recently.This round of increase for Circle more reflects the market's early pricing of potential policy and regulatory benefits rather than a significant improvement in short-term fundamentals. If the regulatory rules for digital assets become clearer, it is expected to not only support Bitcoin but also encourage more institutions to participate in the market.

According to The Block, Cathie Wood's Ark Invest purchased approximately $5.5 million worth of Circle Internet Group stock through the ARKK, ARKW, and ARKF ETFs on Monday, totaling 41,904 shares.This is Ark's first purchase of Circle since March 24. Previously, Circle disclosed its first-quarter financial report, and the stock price closed up 15.91%, at $131.76. Currently, Circle is the sixth largest holding in ARKK (weight 4.6%) and the second largest holding in ARKF (weight 6.66%).

According to BBX data, the earnings season for cryptocurrency concept stocks concluded yesterday with two significant announcements. The core data for the stablecoin sector and mining sector has been revealed, with the following key updates:Circle Internet Group, Inc. (NYSE: $CRCL) announced its Q1 2026 earnings report via BusinessWire on May 11: total revenue and reserve income amounted to $694 million (up 20% year-over-year), below the analyst consensus expectation of approximately $715 million, a difference of about $20.75 million; GAAP EPS was $0.21, exceeding expectations by $0.03 (consensus $0.18); adjusted EBITDA was $151 million (up 24% year-over-year), with a profit margin of 53%; net profit (from continuing operations) was $55 million (down 15% year-over-year). The USDC circulation at the end of the quarter was $77 billion (up 28% year-over-year), with on-chain transaction volume reaching $21.5 trillion (up 263% year-over-year); reserve interest income was $653 million (up 17% year-over-year), with a reserve yield of 3.5% (down 66 basis points year-over-year, reflecting a decline in SOFR); the full-year 2026 guidance remains unchanged. Additionally, Circle disclosed that ARC Token completed a $222 million private pre-sale, with a fully diluted network valuation of $3 billion, and investors include institutions such as a16z crypto, Apollo, ARK Invest, BlackRock, General Catalyst, Haun Ventures, Intercontinental Exchange, IDG Capital, Janus Henderson, and Standard Chartered Ventures.MARA Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: $MARA) announced its Q1 2026 earnings report via GlobeNewswire on May 11: revenue was $174.6 million (down 18% year-over-year, below the consensus of approximately $182.7 million); net loss was $1.3 billion (per share -$3.31, below the consensus range of -$2.20 to -$2.34), with about $1 billion stemming from non-cash accounting losses due to the decline in fair value of digital assets; during Q1, the company mined 2,247 BTC and sold 20,880 BTC during the same period; as of March 31, BTC holdings decreased to 35,303 BTC (approximately $2.4 billion); hash rate increased by 33% year-over-year to 72.2 EH/s; approximately 30% of the outstanding convertible debt (with a face value of over $1 billion) has been repaid; cash and BTC combined balance is $2.9 billion.