USDC Transfers $32T; 95% of Circle Q2 Revenue Is Reserve Income

Coin Metrics measured $32 trillion in adjusted USDC transfers through August 2026, with an annualized adjusted-supply velocity of about 741 times. Circle’s SEC filing for the quarter ended June 30 reports $701.3 million in total revenue and reserve income, of which $667.7 million, or 95.2%, came from interest, dividends and other yields on assets backing USDC. Transaction revenue for the quarter was $5.3 million. Circle reported $14.8 trillion of onchain USDC transaction volume for the quarter, up 151% year over year, and period-end USDC circulation of $73.3 billion.

Coin Metrics described the $32 trillion figure as adjusted transfer volume through August, not a measure of consumer payments or net economic settlement. The firm decomposed raw transfers by tagging activity tied to lending contracts, decentralized exchange liquidity pools and known exchange wallets. On the Base network, 69% of tagged USDC transfer volume was linked to DEX liquidity provision and 23% to flash loans. On Ethereum, flash loans accounted for 65% of tagged volume. The analysis treated its tagged shares as lower-bound estimates and left about 8% of Base volume and 33% of Ethereum volume in a residual category that could include payments, bridging and treasury activity.

Circle’s filing details costs and drivers of reserve income. The company recorded $410.4 million of distribution and transaction costs in the quarter, including $324.6 million identified as Coinbase-related distribution costs, and $412.5 million when other items were included. Circle attributed roughly $147.4 million of year-over-year reserve-income improvement to a 25.2% increase in average daily USDC circulation; a 66-basis-point decline in average yields offset about $113.9 million of that gain, resulting in a net reserve-income increase near $33.5 million.

The filing included a hypothetical sensitivity model showing that a 100-basis-point move from June’s average yield would change reserve income by about $737 million and distribution and transaction costs by about $360 million over the following 12 months.

Circle described Arc, its blockchain infrastructure project, as in private mainnet with more than 100 builders and scheduled for public mainnet on Sept. 16. Arc’s fee design denominates gas and transaction charges in USDC. Circle recorded proceeds from an ARC token presale — 807.5 million tokens for roughly $242.2 million — as deferred revenue in the Q2 filing rather than recognized operating revenue. The filing did not quantify how much Arc gas-fee revenue Circle will retain or which transaction types will dominate activity after public launch.

High onchain transfer totals reflect extensive use of USDC for liquidity rebalancing, arbitrage and other market activity that can generate large gross transfers without equivalent net capital movement or matching fee events for Circle.