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.

Native Markets is selling its brand assets to Coinbase as USDC becomes the protocol's canonical quote asset.

The private token sale for Circle's Arc blockchain was led by a16z crypto, and included BlackRock, Apollo, and Intercontinental Exchange.

The agreement spans spot and perpetual trading, settlement, liquidations, and onboarding flows on the decentralized exchange.