USDC (USDC)

This should be the most outrageous soft rug team I've ever seen: The same team, the same project, two shells, each completed one round of financing; the old shell raised $12 million, the new shell raised $15 million. Before the old shell ceased operations, it diverted traffic to the new shell; now both have collapsed, and neither issued a token. 2022.12: @perenniallabs announced the completion of a $12 million seed round; 2024: Launched the Petals points program, with TVL once exceeding $18 million before a sharp crash; 2025.12: @cascade_xyz announced the completion of a $15 million seed round (almost the same investors as Perennial); 2026.01: Cascade launched a pre-deposit points scheme, oversubscribed more than threefold, with a total of $26 million USDC deposited; 2026.05-06: Perennial officially announced cessation of operations; Cascade's official account has not updated for over a month, suspected to have fled. At this point, the ones I feel most sorry for are the community members who deeply participated in the points and pre-deposit activities.

Selected for note's official "note Money" award, marking the 28th time overall. Moreover, the editorial team saw it as "an article discussing Circle (the issuer of USDC)" and featured it on note's "Circle Internet Group" page. The "99% dollar‑denominated" hegemony map was highlighted as the face of the theme. Thanks to everyone reading 🙏 https://t.co/OwBN7k5jbS https://t.co/lEl2XtRnCf

I'm just hype, I decided to add another figure in my @glider__ mag 7 portfolio. If you are curious why I did so I think your question is meant to be answered by co founder @BrianInCrypto & CM @_biggids 🙃🙂‍↔️ https://t.co/XsLVL7UNcC

$USDC Dominance is dipping right on schedule Meanwhile Bitcoin's price enjoys upside in this relatively short-term macro risk-on climate However, BTC's relief rally would probably end once USDC Dominance successfully retests the red Macro Downtrend as new support #BTC $BTC #USDC #Bitcoin

🔴 The market is struggling in terms of liquidity. 📉 USDC and USDT market cap are down -3.6% and -2% respectively over the past 30 days. Overall, we can see that this slowdown has now been in place since November 2025. This decrease is explained by the fact that more capital has left the crypto market than liquidity has entered it. —💡 To understand this properly, stablecoins are notably issued when demand increases, whereas when demand weakens, issuers burn this unnecessary surplus, which allows us to gauge demand and liquidity flows. — For now, we remain in an environment where liquidity is increasingly constrained.

Circle's biggest current shortcoming is that its revenue mainly depends on U.S. Treasury bonds. In Q1 2026, Circle's total revenue and reserve revenue were $694 million, of which reserve income was $653 million—about 94% still came from USDC reserve asset earnings. Moreover, the reserve return rate for the quarter had already dropped by 66 basis points. This structure looks good in a high‑interest‑rate environment, but once USD rates decline (Fed rate cuts), Circle will be embarrassed by the lack of a second growth curve. The solution is indeed not easy; what I'm saying now is just a guess. In fact, we can see that Tether, another stablecoin, also hasn't found a stable revenue source. Tether has made investments, taken on corporate bonds, bought Bitcoin and gold, but from the financial statements it still lacks a very strong second growth curve. However, USDT's strongest point is its acceptance in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—acceptance brings profit, but USDC's acceptance is much poorer compared to USDT. If there is a choice, CPN is definitely the part that should be accelerated. CPN directly faces banks, PSPs, VASPs, enterprises, and cross‑border payment scenarios, solving the question of who will use USDC for real payments and settlements (though I think it's very hard to solve). As for Arc, I think it is completely about saving transaction fees; unless CPN is fully deployed and has a large user base, Arc's significance is limited. Currently, Circle's biggest issue is still solving settlement problems; there is no way to address usage by non‑cryptocurrency users. Actually, it's not that Circle can't issue its own credit cards; the biggest trouble is that USDC's reserves cannot be lent out. That's the main source of income for the banking system, which Circle—or stablecoins—cannot do.

I'm not very bullish on the long-term space for stablecoin models like Circle's. In the future, stablecoins are most likely to split into two paths: 1. The unregulated route all the way. For example, USDT. It solves real hard needs in global gray money, cross-border settlement, and weak financial systems. Many people use it not because it is “compliant,” but because it is convenient, highly liquid, and has deep consensus. 2. The compliance route. If you go the compliant stablecoin route, the core question is: who ultimately gets the underlying US Treasury yield? Currently many stablecoins are essentially users contributing AUM, the project buys short-term bonds, then keeps the 3%-4% risk‑free yield for themselves. Users bear migration costs, liquidity costs, opportunity costs, and ultimately just help the project inflate its balance sheet. USD1 follows a similar logic: the real underlying yield is most likely taken by the team, then presented to users through tokens like WLFI as a “yield narrative.” This design is clever, but it also shows that the most valuable part of a stablecoin has never been the coin itself, but the underlying asset yield rights. So Circle’s problem isn’t whether it can make money today, but: as the market matures, why would users and channels give you tens or hundreds of billions of US Treasury yield for free in the long term? If you can’t share the yield and lack an irreplaceable payment network or channel monopoly, I think the long‑term valuation of this model is hard to justify. As for those who brainlessly hype Circle every day, like “Lunch,” I can only say: pure idiots, they focus on the compliance narrative and fail to see that yield rights are the core.