CRCL's Arc Blockchain to Power Onchain Finance: What's Ahead?

Circle Internet Group’s CRCL focus on developing USDC-based payment infrastructure is expected to boost growth prospects over the long term. The company has now made Arc, its new open Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built for onchain financial applications and enterprise adoption, available for public testnet. 

Arc supports programmable capital markets, global payments, and tokenized assets with predictable dollar-based fees, sub-second finality, optional privacy, and native integration with Circle’s platform products, including USDC. More than 100 global partners, including financial institutions, asset managers, fintechs, exchanges and blockchain infrastructure providers, have already begun deploying and testing applications on Arc.

CRCL’s USDC stablecoin, redeemable on a one-for-one basis for U.S. dollars and backed by reserves consisting of highly liquid, price-stable cash and cash equivalents, is gaining traction. As of Oct. 16, $75.86 billion USDCs were in circulation. An improving regulatory environment, including the passage of the GENIUS Act, provides a legal background to stablecoins like USDC, paving the way for more enterprise adoption.

Circle has been taking initiatives to boost stablecoin adoption for payments. Circle Payments Network is a platform for financial institutions to use stablecoins for payments, with more than 100 institutions in the pipeline. Circle Gateway, introduced in July, enables seamless cross-chain USDC usage and is currently supported by eight new blockchain partners. An expanding partner base, which includes the likes of Kraken, Binance, Corpay, FIS, Fiserv, OKX, Finastra and Fireblocks, is playing a key role in expanding CRCL’s payments footprint.

Circle Faces Tough Competition

Circle faces stiff competition from the likes of Strategy MSTR and IREN Limited IREN in the cryptocurrency space. 

Strategy is the world’s largest bitcoin treasury company, holding 640,250 bitcoins as of Oct. 12, 2025. The liberal policies of U.S. President Donald Trump have been a key catalyst in driving the adoption of bitcoin. Strategy now expects to achieve a bitcoin yield of 30% and $20 billion in gains, assuming the bitcoin price hits $150,000 at the end of the year.

IREN Limited is one of the world’s lowest-cost bitcoin miners, achieving 326% year-over-year hashrate growth in the third quarter of fiscal 2025. IREN Limited is expanding its GPU fleet with the purchase of an additional 4.2k Blackwell B200 GPUs from NVIDIA, which doubled its total fleet to approximately 8.5k NVIDIA GPUs.

Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Circle shares have climbed 2.6% in the past month, outperforming the broader Zacks Finance sector’s drop of 0.6%.

CRCL Stock’s Performance

The CRCL stock is trading at a premium, as suggested by the Value Score of F.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2025 earnings is pegged at a loss of $1.94 per share, significantly narrower than the loss of $2.13 per share over the past 30 days.

Consensus Estimate Trend

Circle currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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