Circle’s cirBTC backed but has just 40 tokens outstanding

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire described the company as “the platform for the internet financial system.” Eleven weeks after cirBTC launched on Ethereum, a Circle reserve panel dated Aug. 27 showed 40.02450077 cirBTC outstanding and 42.5114162 BTC in reserve.

The reserve snapshot reported 106.2% coverage and a 2.48691543 BTC cushion spread across 14 disclosed Bitcoin addresses. The panel figures indicated more Bitcoin held in custody than cirBTC tokens issued at that moment.

Public market trackers recorded little visible activity for cirBTC. A verified contract page showed no tracked 24-hour trading volume, liquidity or transactions for cirBTC. By comparison, WBTC had about 116,499 tokens outstanding with roughly 116,512 BTC in reserve, and cbBTC totaled about 98,668 tokens backed by about 98,679 BTC. At the late-August checkpoints, cirBTC was around 2,900 times smaller than WBTC and about 2,400 times smaller than cbBTC by token count.

On-chain metrics reflected the same scale differences. DefiLlama recorded about $110.49 million in 24-hour trading volume for WBTC and a maximum observed lending exposure of $3.12 billion. cbBTC showed approximately $338.55 million in 24-hour volume and $2.817 billion in maximum observed lending exposure. Public trackers do not capture private or over-the-counter flows.

Circle’s whitepaper lists Circle International Bermuda Limited as issuer, Circle National Trust as custodian and Circle Internet Financial, LLC as the distribution and minting service. The token is an eight-decimal ERC-20 on Ethereum. Circle National Trust received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in July; the approval applied to the trust bank that holds the Bitcoin reserves, not to cirBTC as a separate financial product.

Circle Mint enables direct issuance and redemption for eligible institutions; primary-market access is limited to qualified businesses. Secondary-market transfers of the ERC-20 token remain available to any holder.

Protocol and venue support was incomplete at the reporting cutoff. A governance proposal sought to onboard cirBTC to Aave, leaving active collateral support, borrowing demand and risk parameters pending. Circle documentation described Arc testnet support and a public mainnet launch that was on track for Sept. 16; the Aug. 29 reporting cutoff preceded that scheduled mainnet date.

Circle reported $73.3 billion of USDC in circulation at the end of the second quarter and $14.8 trillion of USDC on-chain transaction volume during that period. At the Aug. 27 snapshot, Circle’s disclosed reserves exceeded cirBTC tokens outstanding, and public circulation of cirBTC remained small relative to established wrapped Bitcoin tokens.