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1. What did Circle disclose about USDC revenue?
Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, disclosed on October 16 how its USDC revenue was divided: about $819 million of its roughly $1.4 billion in first-half 2026 revenue went to distribution partners and transaction costs, or about 59 cents of every dollar. Kash Razzaghi, the company's chief commercial officer, set out the split in a blog post.
The breakdown is unusually specific for a company in a sector where the economics of issuing a dollar-pegged token are often discussed in the abstract. Rather than describing the business model in general terms, Razzaghi translated the first-half results into cents per dollar, a format that makes the figures easy to compare with the claims of other stablecoin projects.
The post does not divide the $819 million between the two categories it combines. Readers therefore cannot tell from the disclosure how much went to partners such as exchanges and platforms that distribute USDC, and how much covered the direct costs of processing transactions. Only the combined figure was given.
2. How is Circle's USDC revenue split beyond partners?
Beyond the 59 cents paid out to partners and for transaction costs, Circle said about $473 million, or roughly 34 cents of each revenue dollar, was spent on running and building the business. Razzaghi listed licenses, bank relationships, settlement liquidity, compliance, new products and blockchain integrations as the items covered by that spending.
That left 7 cents of net profit for every dollar of first-half revenue. The three pieces are consistent with one another: the partner and transaction costs, the infrastructure spending and a profit of about 7 percent together account for the full revenue figure of roughly $1.4 billion.
The 34-cent category is the part of the picture that the post emphasizes most. It covers the unglamorous machinery behind a regulated stablecoin: the licenses that allow the company to operate in different jurisdictions, the banking relationships that hold and move reserve cash, the liquidity needed so that transfers settle when customers expect them to, and the compliance staff and systems that screen activity. Each of those items is a recurring expense rather than a one-time build.
3. Why did Circle publish the figures?
Razzaghi presented the numbers as a reply to what he called new entrants, newer stablecoin issuers that argue established issuers keep too much of the income their tokens generate and charge too much for redemptions. He did not name any of them, and the post does not single out a specific competitor.
His central argument was that Circle already shares most of USDC's economics with the partners that drive adoption of the token. He characterized rival pitches that promise partners a substantial majority of issuer income as offering a stablecoin that distributes everything but funds nothing, meaning there would be little left to pay for the licensing, banking and liquidity that make the token usable.
He went further, arguing that without spending on those foundations a stablecoin is only a token and not a digital dollar. The distinction matters to the way Circle frames its product: in this telling, a stablecoin's value to customers depends on legal permissions, bank access and reliable settlement, not just on a smart contract that can be transferred between wallets.
4. What is the Open USD model Circle's post is answering?
Although Circle's post does not mention it, one project that fits the debate is Open USD, a stablecoin from Open Standard. It has drawn backing from more than 140 companies, including Coinbase, Visa and Stripe. Its model would pass all reserve earnings to its partners, minus a small management fee.
That design is the mirror image of the argument Razzaghi made. Where Circle says it needs to retain a meaningful share of income to fund infrastructure, a model that hands nearly all reserve earnings to distributors puts the question of who pays for that infrastructure at the center of the discussion. The two approaches are therefore competing not only on price to partners but on how each defines what an issuer is responsible for.
For background, stablecoin issuers generally earn money by holding the cash and short-term assets that back their tokens and collecting the interest those reserves produce. Holders of the token typically do not receive that interest directly, so the revenue accrues to the issuer, which then decides how much to share with the businesses that bring in customers and balances. The split Circle disclosed is a window into that decision.
5. How do USDC partners earn their share?
Under Circle's arrangement, a partner's share of reserve income rises with the USDC balances it attracts and holds. A platform that brings in more customers who keep more USDC on deposit therefore earns more, which gives distributors a direct financial reason to promote the token.
Razzaghi pointed to Coinbase as an example. The exchange reported record second-quarter average USDC of $20 billion in its products, an increase of 44 percent from a year earlier. He also cited Binance, which signed a five-year commercial agreement with Circle in September and bought $100 million of Circle stock. According to the post, more than 150 other partners also share in the growth of USDC.
The structure ties the fortunes of the issuer and its distributors together. When balances grow, both sides benefit, and the 59 cents per dollar that Circle reported paying out in the first half is the result of that arrangement operating at scale.
6. What does redemption cost Circle?
Redemption is the second complaint Razzaghi addressed. He said every Circle customer can redeem USDC for dollars at no charge over standard bank rails, which settle within up to two business days. Faster options exist as well: free, near-instant redemption is available to users of the Circle Payments Network and to customers who qualify through Arc, Circle Mint or Circle Wallets.
Providing that speed has a price, and Circle says it absorbs it. To be able to honor quick redemptions, the company holds cash at partner banks, which pays less than Treasuries would. The difference is income Circle gives up so that customers do not have to wait. In Razzaghi's words, the company carries that cost so customers do not have to.
The point serves the broader argument of the post. Charging for redemptions is one way an issuer could recover such costs, and the critics Razzaghi referred to say some issuers charge too much. Circle's answer is that it covers the expense through its own margin instead, which is part of what the 34 cents of infrastructure spending and the thin 7-cent profit are meant to illustrate.
7. Why the cents-per-dollar framing matters
Presenting results per revenue dollar is a deliberate choice. Absolute figures such as $819 million or $473 million are large and hard to judge in isolation, whereas a statement that 7 cents of each dollar becomes profit invites a direct comparison with other businesses and with the promises made by competing stablecoin projects. It also reduces a complicated set of arrangements to a single table that partners and prospective partners can read in seconds.
The profit margin is the most striking element of that table. A margin of 7 cents on the dollar is modest for a company whose product is, at its core, a token backed by reserves. Circle uses the number to argue that the business is not extracting excessive income from the arrangement: the large majority of what comes in is either shared with the ecosystem or consumed by the cost of operating a regulated financial product.
The disclosure also clarifies what the 59-cent figure does and does not represent. It combines two quite different recipients, so it should not be read as the share handed to partners alone. Some of it covers the costs of moving money and processing transactions, which would be incurred regardless of who distributes the token. Without a split between the two, outside observers cannot calculate exactly how generous the partner payouts are, only the combined outflow.
For businesses weighing which stablecoin to build into their products, the practical question is the one Razzaghi's post tries to frame: whether a higher headline share of issuer income is worth more than the licenses, bank access and liquidity that a better-funded issuer says it provides. The numbers Circle published do not settle that question, but they give both sides of the argument a common set of reference points for the first time.
8. How large is USDC activity?
The post also offered usage figures to show the scale behind the revenue. USDC handled more than $36 trillion in onchain volume in the first half of 2026, and more than $315 billion was minted and redeemed over the period. Minting is the creation of new tokens when customers deposit dollars, and redemption is the reverse, when tokens are returned for cash.
By Circle's own count, USDC accounted for about 77 percent of global stablecoin transaction volume in June, up from 60 percent a year earlier. The company is the source of that comparison, and the post presents it as evidence that its model attracts activity rather than constraining it.
Taken together, the disclosure gives the market a concrete benchmark. With about 59 cents of each revenue dollar going to partners and transaction costs, 34 cents to infrastructure and 7 cents to profit, Circle has put a precise reference point into a debate that had so far been conducted mostly in broad claims about who deserves the income from a stablecoin's reserves.