The cirBTC market on Arc holds $14.3 million of USDC borrowed against 287 cirBTC, up from $1.37 million on Sept. 17. Galaxy and Keyrock supply nearly all the dollars. Circle issues the wrapper and the wallet; the loan terms sit with Morpho.

The Layer 1 charges gas in USDC and runs proof-of-authority across a permissioned set of 11 institutions plus Circle. More than 100 applications are live at launch, with Aave, Morpho and Uniswap anchoring DeFi. Circle minted 10 billion ARC tokens this week without committing to a public launch.

Official materials name Circle and 11 founding validators, while an Arc documentation page describes approximately 20 validators at launch.

Circle National Trust custodies the backing, while published Bitcoin addresses and Chainlink Proof of Reserve provide onchain visibility; Arc support remains forthcoming.

Circle's own disclaimer says Arc will be "operated by a permissioned validator set" and has not been reviewed by the New York State Department of Financial Services or any other regulator.

The stablecoin issuer received a charter for First National Digital Currency Bank, allowing it to custody digital assets and, eventually, hold USDC reserves under direct federal supervision. Shares rose more than 10%.

Jeremy Allaire argued that stablecoin networks are winner-take-most businesses built over years, two days after the launch of the 140-plus-firm Open USD consortium sent Circle's stock down more than 17% in a single session.

BNY, the world's largest custodian bank with $59.4 trillion in assets under custody, has made USDC the first stablecoin on its Digital Asset Custody platform, enabling institutional clients to store, transfer, mint, and redeem Circle's dollar-pegged token alongside traditional assets.

Circle published a formal USDC method specification for the Machine Payments Protocol on Monday, standardizing how AI agents and automated services settle payments in USDC across EVM-compatible blockchains and Solana. The spec introduces the first crosschain MPP payment profile via Circle Gateway and adds USDCx on Stacks.

Circle introduced Agent Marketplace as part of its Agent Stack, enabling autonomous agents to discover and pay for trusted services through programmable, usage-based economic models.