Shares of Circle Internet Group ( CRCL ) were seen before landing 13 percent higher by midday on Monday.
The stablecoin issuer reported its first quarterly earnings 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 had expected $46 million in profit and $721 million in total revenue.
However, more stable coin margins, a larger token sale to institutions, and increased usage opportunities raised investor hopes.
Its flagship stablecoin, (USDC-USD), ended the first quarter with $77 billion in circulation. This is an increase of 28% from a year ago and 2.3% from the end of 2025. Importantly, the company earned higher margins on its stablecoin reserves during this period, indicating less reliance on third-party platforms such as crypto exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and Binance.
“They’re getting more volume from their platform, which means they’re less dependent on other third-party platforms,” Mizuho analyst Dan Dulio said in an interview, noting that the company continues to grow the use cases for stablecoins.
Read more: How Stablecoins Work
Circle CEO Jeremy Allier called the firm’s growth in stablecoin usage “phenomenal” during an interview with Yahoo Finance. He also pointed to the company’s future opportunity to facilitate AI agent payments.
“We believe we’re going through the biggest platform transformation in the history of the Internet, and it’s accelerating,” Allier said.
Circle did not change its guidance while adding that it expects to share a revision in the second quarter.
The company went public last summer in a blockbuster IPO as the first US publicly listed stablecoin issuer. After skyrocketing in the days following that listing, shares are still down more than 50% from their highs. However, Circle stock is up 56% year-to-date.
Stablecoins are crypto tokens whose values are pegged to another asset, often the US dollar. As their prices fluctuate much less than other cryptocurrencies, these digital assets play a key role in the crypto world, primarily for traders looking for a safe haven during volatile crypto market conditions.
But the big desire for Circle and many other crypto players is for stablecoins to gain wider adoption in cross-border transactions and online commerce. This includes the new frontier of so-called agentic commerce, where artificial intelligence agents buy and sell autonomously.
Circle announced on Monday that it is developing a suite of tools for software programmers and AI agents to make using USDC more easily. At the end of April, Meta quietly Outside support rolled Earlier this year, Circle marked an infrastructure partnership with prediction market Polymarket to pay content creators in USDC, starting with workers in Colombia and the Philippines.