Circle Says $819M of Its $1.4B First-Half Revenue Went to Partners

Circle published the arithmetic behind USDC on Friday. Of roughly $1.4 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, $819 million left the company as payments to distribution partners and transaction costs. Another $473 million went back into licenses, banking relationships, settlement liquidity and compliance. What stayed was about 7 cents of net profit on every dollar of revenue. Four outlets carried the same three numbers out of the post, and two of them give its author a different job title.

Where the 59 cents goes

The $819 million is 59 cents of each revenue dollar, and none of the accounts swept splits it between money paid to partners and the cost of moving funds across banks and blockchains. The $473 million is 34 cents, covering licenses, bank relationships, settlement liquidity, compliance, product development and blockchain integrations. Circle's half-year figure contains the $701 million it reported for the second quarter, which puts the first quarter close to the same level. No account gives a dollar figure for net income. Circle gave the share and stopped there.

Two partners are named by size. Coinbase held a record average of $20 billion of USDC across its products in the second quarter, up 44% year over year, on the accounts carried by Unchained and FXStreet. Binance signed a five-year commercial agreement in September and bought $100 million of Circle stock at the same time. More than 150 exchanges, wallets, banks, fintechs and payment platforms hold an economic stake in USDC besides those two.

One number, two periods

USDC settled more than $36 trillion in onchain transactions, a figure every account carries and not every account dates. The KuCoin flash relaying Odaily states it as the first half of 2026. The Block attaches it to June without naming the period it covers. Minting and redemptions came to more than $315 billion over the six months, an average of about $1.7 billion a day. Circle's own measure puts USDC at about 77% of global stablecoin transaction volume in June, up from about 60% a year earlier.

The wider figure in the same coverage is a bank's. Stablecoin monthly transfer value has averaged nearly $10 trillion this year, according to a Standard Chartered report carried by The Block and Traders Union. Both trace to the same document, so it rests on one source.

Two titles for the same executive

The post is signed by Kash Razzaghi. The Block and Traders Union call him Circle's chief operating officer; Unchained and FXStreet call him chief commercial officer. Two accounts each way, and they do not reconcile. Traders Union is also the only outlet swept that reads the disclosure as an answer to newer stablecoin issuers who say established ones keep too much of the float, so that framing rests on a single account.

"That reinvestment is not overhead," Razzaghi wrote. "It is what makes USDC useful, and it reflects more than 8 years of building."

The figure the post leaves out

Cents per dollar is not net income, and the gap matters to anyone pricing the stock. Circle reports third-quarter results on 4 November, the first statement that has to carry a number instead of a share. Friday's market reading of the post is itself unsettled. FXStreet logged CRCL at about $82.40, down more than 5%, while Crypto Times' headline the same day had it trading near $87, and neither account states the time of its snapshot. The part the post does commit to is redemption: standard bank-rail redemptions settle in up to two business days, and eligible Circle Payments Network customers get something close to real time.