Shares of Circle Internet Group (CRCL) fell on Monday before rising 13% during the day.
The stablecoin maker reported its first quarter profit amid a volatile year for crypto. Revenue rose 20% year over year to $694 million, while earnings fell 15% to $55 million, or $0.21 per share. Analysts were expecting a profit of $46 million and $721 million in total revenue.
However, investors’ optimism has been raised by stablecoin’s high margins, large institutional token sales, and growing usage opportunities.
Its flagship stablecoin, (USDC-USD), ended the first quarter with $77 billion. That’s a 28% increase from last year and 2.3% from the end of 2025. Sadly, the company has experienced a high limit on its stablecoin reserves during that time, indicating less reliance on third-party platforms such as crypto exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and Binance.
“They’re getting more volume on their platform, which means they’re less dependent on other third-party platforms,” said Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev in an interview, adding that the company is gradually increasing the use cases for stablecoins.
Read more: How stablecoins work
CEO Jeremy Allaire described the company’s stablecoin usage growth as “extraordinary” during an interview with Yahoo Finance. He also pointed to the company’s future opportunity to run payments for AI agents.
“We believe we’re going through the biggest platform transition in the history of the Internet, and it’s accelerating,” Allaire said.
Circle left its guidance unchanged while adding that it expects to share updates in the second quarter.
The company went public last summer in a blockbuster IPO as the first US stablecoin issuer to go public. After rallying in the days following that listing, shares are still down more than 50% from their highs. However, Circle’s stock is up 56% for the year.
Stablecoins are crypto tokens whose value is linked to another asset, usually US dollars. Because their prices are more volatile than those of other cryptocurrencies, these digital assets play an important role in the crypto world, especially for traders looking for a safe haven during volatile crypto market conditions.
But the larger ambition of Circle and many other crypto players is for stablecoins to find wider adoption in cross-border transactions and online commerce. This includes the new frontier of so-called commercial agents, where artificial intelligence agents automate the buying and selling.
Circle announced on Monday that it is releasing a series of tools for software programmers and AI agents to easily use USDC. At the end of April, Meta quietly launched support for paying content creators in USDC, starting with operators in Colombia and the Philippines. Earlier this year, Circle announced an infrastructure partnership with forex market Polymarket.
In a sign that large institutions continue to invest in the company’s efforts, Circle also said on Monday that it sold 222 million dollars of Arc, the traditional token of the new blockchain that it plans to launch. The group of investors included Apollo Global Management, Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, and the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company Intercontinental Exchange. (Disclosure: Yahoo is a financial portfolio company managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management.)
Circle’s USDC has been a big winner in the Trump administration’s push to make the US a major crypto hub by introducing a better regulatory framework. Last summer, President Trump signed the first federal law for dollar-pegged stablecoins like USDC.
After a long delay, the Senate Banking Committee is planning a hearing on Thursday on another major crypto bill, known as the CLARITY Act. It is hoped that the bill will be signed before August.
“We were clear that the network is impacting money and the global reach of our network, as well as sound regulation, makes USDC the preferred option for large enterprises integrating this technology,” Allaire told analysts on Monday.
David Hollerith covers the financial sector, from the country’s biggest banks to regional lenders, private firms, and the cryptocurrency space.
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