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Circle Internet Group CRCL

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The bet you're really making is that USDC, the digital dollar Circle runs, keeps growing, so more and more dollars sit in Circle's care. You're betting the interest on those dollars stays high, because reserve income, interest earned on the Treasury bills backing the coin, is roughly 95% of total revenue, and the Federal Reserve is now cutting rates. Right now it is stalling: reserve income peaked at $733 million in the December 2025 quarter and has fallen to $668 million since, even as the coin base grew, while quarterly profit fell to $48 million from $214 million a year earlier as rate cuts bite faster than circulation expands. You pay about 97 times this year's expected earnings, near the top of the short record it has since listing in June 2025.

Key data

Price$102.05
52-week range$49.90–$159.47
P/E, TTM / fwd FY2670x / 97x
Price / book value4.8x

CRCL · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$42$96$149$202$255 Jun '25Sep '25Dec '25Mar '26Jun '26Sep '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Circle issues USDC, a stablecoin: one token worth one dollar, redeemable on demand. The dollars people hand over go into a reserve of short-term US Treasuries and cash, run alongside BlackRock, and Circle keeps the interest. That is nearly the whole engine. Reserve income is about 95% of revenue as of Q2 2026, down from 99% in 2024 as subscription, services and transaction fees grow, so the business is really a giant money-market fund wearing a payments coat. The moat is the network: USDC is the number-two stablecoin behind Tether, wired into exchanges, wallets and, increasingly, payments. The catch is that Circle rents its distribution. Coinbase takes a material share of reserve income under their sharing deal, plus the yield on every USDC parked on Coinbase. A user holding the coin earns nothing; Circle earns the yield on the bills behind it, then hands a portion to its partner. That spread, after the split, is the company.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05Closing thoughts
  6. 06Methodology

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