Circle (Company)

Circle, formally Circle Internet Group, is a US financial technology company best known as the issuer of USDC, a stablecoin designed to keep a value of one US dollar, and EURC, a euro-denominated stablecoin. It was founded in 2013 by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville. After several years experimenting with consumer payments and crypto trading, Circle focused on stablecoins, and USDC became the second-largest stablecoin by market value after Tether. Circle listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2025 under the ticker CRCL.

Circle sits between the traditional financial system and blockchains. It holds cash and short-term US government debt as reserves, issues tokens on many networks and redeems them for dollars or euros through banks. It operates under money transmission licences in the United States, an electronic money institution authorisation in France for its European business, and other permissions, and it publishes regular reports on its reserves.

Circle works a bit like a cloakroom for dollars. A business hands Circle a dollar, and Circle gives back a digital ticket, a USDC token, that can travel across the internet in seconds. Whoever holds the ticket can later hand it back to Circle and get the dollar returned. Meanwhile, Circle keeps the dollars safe in banks and in very short-term government bonds.

Circle earns most of its money from the interest on those reserves, rather than from fees. That makes the business very sensitive to interest rates: when rates are high, it earns a lot; when they fall, its income shrinks. It also shares part of that income with partners, such as exchanges, that help USDC spread.

Circle began in Boston as a consumer bitcoin and payments company and later offered Circle Pay, a peer-to-peer payments app. It bought the crypto exchange Poloniex in 2018 and sold it in 2019. In September 2018, Circle and Coinbase launched USDC through a joint body, Centre, which set its rules until it was wound down in 2023 and Circle took over full governance. A plan to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, announced in 2021, was cancelled in December 2022. Circle launched its euro stablecoin, then called Euro Coin, in 2022. Its initial public offering in June 2025 priced at $31 per share, and the stock rose sharply on its first day of trading, in one of the most closely watched crypto listings to date.

Approved business customers send dollars to Circle, which mints an equal amount of USDC; when they return USDC, Circle burns the tokens and pays out dollars, the process described under stablecoin minting and burning. Key features include:

• Reserves. Most reserves are held in the Circle Reserve Fund, a US government money market fund managed by BlackRock, with the rest in cash at banks.
• Attestations. An accounting firm reports monthly on whether reserves at least equal USDC in circulation.
• Multiple chains. USDC is issued natively on many blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana and others.
• Cross-chain transfers. Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol burns USDC on one chain and mints it on another, avoiding wrapped copies.
• Freezing. The USDC contract lets Circle block addresses, for example under sanctions or court orders.

In 2024, Circle became one of the first large stablecoin issuers to comply with the European Union's MiCA regulation, issuing USDC and EURC in Europe through its French e-money institution. In the United States, the GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, created a federal framework for payment stablecoins, which Circle had long supported. Circle also works with central banks, banks and payment firms that use USDC for cross-border stablecoin payments and settlement. In 2025 it announced Arc, a blockchain of its own designed for stablecoin payments.

In March 2023, Circle disclosed that about $3.3 billion of USDC reserves were held at Silicon Valley Bank, which had just failed. USDC briefly traded well below one dollar, an example of depegging, before recovering once US authorities guaranteed the bank's deposits. The episode showed that even well-reserved stablecoins depend on the banks that hold their cash. Other risks include falling interest rates, which cut Circle's income, dependence on distribution partners that receive a large share of reserve income, and competition from other issuers and banks. Critics also point to Circle's power to freeze tokens, though supporters see it as necessary for sanctions screening and law enforcement. More background on the sector is given under Stablecoin.

• Circle