Circle’s decision to publish the economics behind USDC turns a headline into something closer to an operating statement. The stablecoin issuer reported about $1.4 billion in revenue for the first half of 2026, but the more revealing numbers are the ones that follow: where that money went, and how little of it remained as profit.
The dollar-by-dollar split
Of every dollar of revenue, Circle says roughly 59 cents went to distribution partners and transaction costs, about $819 million in total. Those partners are the wallets, exchanges, banks and payment networks that put USDC in front of users, so the payout is a cost of distribution rather than a giveaway.
Another 34 cents, roughly $473 million, covered what Circle describes as the foundation of a compliant stablecoin: licenses and registrations, banking relationships, settlement liquidity, compliance programs and blockchain integrations. After those two categories, the company reported about 7 cents of net profit per dollar of revenue.
Why Circle published the figures
The post is framed as a rebuttal to newer issuers that promise to share a “substantial majority” of their economics with partners. Circle’s chief commercial officer, Kash Razzaghi, argued that a stablecoin that “distributes everything but funds nothing” leaves out the cost of redemption, compliance and resilience. Without that foundation, he wrote, a stablecoin “is not a digital dollar; it is a token.”
Scale behind the numbers
The revenue figures sit on top of meaningful volume. USDC settled more than $36 trillion in onchain transactions during the first half of the year, and Circle minted and redeemed more than $315 billion of USDC, about $1.7 billion a day. By June, Circle said USDC carried roughly 77% of global stablecoin transaction volume, up from 60% a year earlier.
The partner network behind that scale is concentrated but broad. Coinbase, Circle’s largest partner, reported average USDC balances of $20 billion in its second-quarter results, up 44% year over year. Binance signed a five-year commercial agreement and invested $100 million in Circle in September. Circle says more than 150 partners hold an economic interest in USDC’s growth.
What the margin is funding
Circle also points to the infrastructure the retained share pays for. All customers can redeem USDC for free through standard banking rails, settling in up to two business days, while flows over the Circle Payments Network and platform customers can redeem free in near real time. Reserves sit in a government money market fund managed by BlackRock and custodied at BNY, with monthly attestations, and USDC runs natively on more than 35 blockchains across 185 countries.
What the disclosure does and does not establish
The figures come from Circle’s own blog post, so they reflect the company’s framing and are not an audited financial statement. A margin of about 7 cents on the dollar is thin relative to headline revenue, which is why Circle emphasizes the cost of licenses, compliance and redemption when comparing itself with newer entrants.
The numbers also do not settle whether partners will keep favoring USDC. Distribution share can shift, and a revenue split is only part of what matters to a stablecoin’s users. Redemption speed, reserve transparency and regulatory standing all affect whether people hold and move the asset, and those qualities are harder to measure than a single percentage.
Adapted from Circle Discloses $1.4 Billion H1 Revenue, Paying 59% to USDC Partners.