Circle built a blockchain for AI agents to pay each other; its income is still Treasury yield
AI agents are already paying each other by the hundreds of millions on Circle's new Arc chain, at about 30 cents a payment. Circle still earns about 95% of its revenue from interest on the Treasuries backing USDC, and Wednesday's consumer-price index print moves that line, not the micropayments.
Richard Tang · 3 min read
The agents are already paying each other
The agent economy finally has transaction numbers, and they come from the company selling the rail. Kash Razzaghi, chief commercial officer of Circle+0.87% — Circle, up 0.87 percent today, the issuer of the USDC digital dollar, told Intercontinental Exchange's Inside the ICE House podcast on October 9 that the first payment between two AI agents came earlier this year: one agent bought a weather data set from another 1. Hundreds of millions of agent-to-agent payments have followed, averaging about 30 cents, mostly for API calls and data 1.
Agents need a rail built for machines
Agents, in Razzaghi's telling, carry no brand memory: they choose whatever is cheapest, fastest and most secure, so a payment must land instantly and cannot be clawed back 1. Arc, the blockchain Circle took live on September 16, is built for that machine behavior: fees are paid in USDC rather than a volatile token, a payment settles irreversibly in under a second, and agent wallets ship with spending limits and nanopayments 23.
Its founding validators are BlackRock, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Intercontinental Exchange, Mastercard, Visa and Standard Chartered 23. Agents already settle in USDC elsewhere, which Circle says, citing Dune data, carries 98.8% of agent-driven transaction volume 3. More than 1,200 projects are building on the chain 2.
The rail is live; the revenue is not
The June quarter prices the gap. USDC moved $14.8 trillion on-chain, up 151% from a year earlier 4. Circle's fee for moving it was $5.3 million, against $667.7 million of interest on the Treasuries backing the coin, out of $701.3 million of revenue 48. That interest line is why this page called Circle a Treasury fund wearing a payments logo on October 11.
Ninety-five cents of Circle's revenue dollar is Treasury interest
- Reserve interest667.795.2%
- Other fees28.34%
- Transaction fee5.30.8%
Data
| Part | Q2 2026 revenue | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Reserve interest | 667.7 | 95.2% |
| Other fees | 28.3 | 4% |
| Transaction fee | 5.3 | 0.8% |
The interest rides two inputs: $73.3 billion of USDC in circulation at the end of June, and a reserve yield near 3.5% 4. The one fee line growing is the Circle Payments Network, Circle's near-real-time cross-border payments service, at $14.7 billion annualized across 175 institutions, up 76% quarter over quarter 24.
Circle's revenue flattened through 2026 after a strong 2025
Data
| Revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q3 '24 | $446 |
| Q4 '24 | $435 |
| Q1 '25 | $579 |
| Q2 '25 | $658 |
| Q3 '25 | $740 |
| Q4 '25 | $770 |
| Q1 '26 | $694 |
| Q2 '26 | $701 |
Wednesday moves the yield, not the agents
September's consumer-price index lands Wednesday, and it moves the line that pays Circle. The Fed has already raised rates this autumn, and Goldman Sachs−0.12% — Goldman Sachs, down 0.12 percent today expects one more quarter-point hike in December 6. Nothing in that print touches the 30-cent payments, which is the point: CRCL, Circle's New York Stock Exchange-listed stock, trades today as a rates instrument with an unpriced option on agent payments 8.
The validator list underlines the wager, because ICE, Visa and Mastercard run the card and clearing rails that a near-free payment network competes with 27. The stock still fell on launch day, slipping more than 6% when the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY crypto market-structure bill the day before 7.
The watch-list is short and mostly rates-shaped
The watch-list is short. Arc's agent payments have no disclosed revenue line of their own yet 4. The payments network is the one fee line growing 4. And Wednesday's print moves that $667.7 million interest line whichever way inflation lands 68.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
