Circle Internet Group (CRCL) stock sawsawed on Monday before landing 13% higher by midday.
The stablecoin issuer reported its first quarter earnings amid a volatile year for crypto. Revenue climbed 20% year over year to $694 million, while earnings declined 15% to $55 million, or $0.21 per share. Analysts were expecting $46 million in profits and $721 million in total revenue.
However, investor optimism was lifted by higher stablecoin margins, a big token sale to institutions, and growing use-case opportunities.
Its flagship stablecoin, (USDC-USD), ended the first quarter with $77 billion in circulation. That’s a 28% increase from a year earlier and 2.3% from the end of 2025. Crucially, the company earned a higher margin on its stablecoin reserves during the period, signaling less dependence on third-party platforms like crypto exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and Binance.
“They’re getting more of the volume from their platform, which means they’re relying less on some of the other third-party platforms,” Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev said in an interview, adding that the company is steadily growing use cases for stablecoins.
Read more: How stablecoins work
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire described the usage growth of the firm’s stablecoin as “extraordinary” during an interview with Yahoo Finance. He also pointed to the company’s future opportunity to facilitate AI agent payments.
“We believe we are going through the largest platform shift in the history of the internet, and it is accelerating,” Allaire said.
Circle left its guidance unchanged while adding that it expects to share revisions 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 high. However, Circle stock is up 56% on the year.
Stablecoins are crypto tokens with prices pegged to another asset, most often US dollars. Because their prices fluctuate far less than those of other cryptocurrencies, these digital assets play a key role in the crypto world, primarily for traders seeking a safe haven during volatile crypto market conditions.
But the larger ambition for Circle and many other crypto players is for stablecoins to gain wider adoption in cross-border transactions and online commerce. This includes the newer frontier of so-called agentic commerce, where artificial intelligence agents autonomously conduct buying and selling.
Circle announced on Monday that it’s rolling out a suite of tools for software programmers and AI agents to more easily use USDC. In late April, Meta quietly rolled out support for paying content creators in USDC, starting with workers in Colombia and the Philippines. Earlier this year, Circle notched an infrastructure partnership with predictions market Polymarket.