Circle Internet Group’s third quarter looks strong on the top line: $865 million in total revenue and reserve income, up 17% from a year earlier. The line beneath it points the other way. Reserve income, the money Circle earns on the reserves backing $73.3 billion of USDC, fell 8% to $658 million.
One non-recurring item explains the gap. Other revenue rose 627% to $207 million, and $182 million of that came from the presale of Circle’s ARC token. Remove the presale and the quarter lands near $683 million, below the $740 million Circle reported in the third quarter of 2025.
Usage is genuinely expanding. Average USDC in circulation grew 8% to $73.3 billion, and onchain transaction volume reached $13.9 trillion, up 49% from a year earlier. Circle minted $104 billion of USDC and redeemed the same amount during the quarter, a churn rate that points to payments and settlement rather than coins sitting idle.
The economics moved the other way. Circle’s reserve return rate slipped 61 basis points to 3.5%, which is what turned higher circulation into lower income. Its share of the dollar-stablecoin market fell 183 basis points to 27%, even as meaningful wallets grew 16% to 7.3 million.
The partnerships tell the same story. Binance made a $100 million equity investment in Circle and expanded its USDC promotion deal. Visa moved its stablecoin prefunding into commercial use, letting clients fund cross-border payouts across more than 180 countries. Samsung Wallet began letting some U.S. Galaxy users send USDC to bank accounts in more than 60 countries, and Circle agreed to buy Tazapay, a Singapore payments platform with $25 billion in annualized volume, in a deal expected to close in 2027.
Circle’s longer bet is the Arc blockchain, which opened its public mainnet on September 16 with a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens and more than 100 institutional builders on day one. That made Circle the first publicly traded company to mint a network token for a new layer-one chain. A developer community of more than 75,000 Arc House members and 10,000 architects had already built over 1,200 projects during the private mainnet. Management guided full-year 2026 other revenue to $310 million to $330 million, a range that already includes the recognized presale.
The quarter closed with adjusted EBITDA of $317 million, up 85% and helped by the presale plus lower distribution costs, while operating expenses rose 16% to $245 million. Net income from continuing operations was $226 million, a 26% margin, down 285 basis points. Circle also cut about 5% of its workforce during the quarter, recording restructuring charges of roughly $9.1 million.
The number to watch next quarter is the reserve return rate. It tracks short-term rates on USDC’s backing assets, and a 61-basis-point drop did more to shape these results than any growth headline. Whether the token business keeps filling that gap is what the next filing will show.
Adapted from Circle Q3 Revenue Rises 17% to $865M as USDC Reserve Income Falls 8%.