Jeremy Allaire’s Circle Wins Federal Trust Charter

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted final approval on July 10, 2026 for First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., to operate as Circle National Trust. The approval establishes a federal custody charter for Circle’s digital-asset infrastructure and places the company’s custody operations under federal supervision.

Circle filed the application in June 2025 and received conditional approval in December 2025. The charter replaces a set of state licenses that had covered custody operations. Circle has indicated it intends to expand the charter to include reserve management at a later date.

The company’s stock rose by double digits after the OCC announced final approval. Market observers had noted Circle had filed earlier than several competitors and cleared its conditional review ahead of other applicants.

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, has led the company since its launch in Boston in October 2013. He co-founded Allaire Corporation and created the ColdFusion web platform in 1995 and later founded Brightcove. Circle issued the USDC stablecoin in September 2018 through a partnership with Coinbase and took full control of USDC issuance in August 2023 after restructuring that arrangement.

USDC stood at roughly $73 billion in circulation across 34 blockchains as of July 2026. On-chain USDC transaction volume reached about $21.5 trillion in the first quarter of 2026. Circle reported $694 million in revenue and reserve income for Q1 2026.

Circle’s product portfolio includes the Circle Payments Network, which reached $8.3 billion in annualized settlement volume by the end of Q1 2026, and USYC, a tokenized money market fund that passed $3 billion in assets under management.

The company is building a new blockchain called Arc, a purpose-built Layer 1 that uses USDC as its native gas token and targets sub-second finality and configurable privacy for institutional payments and capital markets. Arc’s public testnet launched in October 2025 with participation from more than 100 institutions and had processed over 244 million transactions by May 2026. Circle completed a $222 million ARC token presale in May 2026 at a $3 billion fully diluted valuation and planned a mainnet launch for summer 2026.

In May 2026 Circle introduced the Circle Agent Stack, a set of AI-driven tools for automated commerce that can transact in stablecoins. Allaire wrote that the company was “moving beyond a stablecoin issuer to a broader internet platform company.”

Regulatory developments shaped Circle’s strategy. U.S. legislation known as the GENIUS Act became law in July 2025, creating a federal framework for payment stablecoins. Circle became the first global issuer to comply with the EU’s MiCA rules in 2024 and holds licenses or approvals in jurisdictions including the U.K., Singapore, Bermuda, Canada and Abu Dhabi.

Circle and the stablecoin sector have faced operational tests. In March 2023 Silicon Valley Bank failed with $3.3 billion of USDC cash reserves inside and USDC temporarily lost its dollar peg. Allaire committed corporate resources to cover any reserve shortfall during that weekend; regulators later guaranteed SVB deposits and USDC returned to parity. The company revised custody and reserve practices after the incident.

Circle’s near-term priorities include the Arc mainnet launch and expanding federally supervised custody services. The company faces competition from other token issuers and payments networks and continues to integrate with institutional partners and service providers.