Category: Business

Stablecoin issuer Circle saw USDC circulation grow 72% year-on-year to $75.3 billion in the fourth quarter. The company also reported that transaction volume reached $11.9 trillion, an increase of 247%.

USDC market capitalization has wavered slightly since the end of last year, dipping as low as $70 billion at the start of February. But it has since rebounded to nearly $75 billion, according to crypto price aggregator CoinGecko.

Circle released its report early Wednesday morning and had its earnings call scheduled for 8 a.m. New York time. In pre-market trading, CRCL shares jumped 14%. After the opening bell, the gains jumped to 20%, with the stock changing hands for $73.24 at the time of writing.

“The print reinforces continued USDC adoption despite a softer crypto backdrop and should support a strong positive stock reaction today,” wrote Clear Street analysts Owen Lau and Nikhil Vijay in a note shared with Decrypt.

CEO Jeremy Allaire opened the company’s earnings call saying he believes Circle will grow in tandem with the artificial intelligence industry, and “drive the greatest acceleration of economic activity we’ve ever seen in human history.”

“Not only will our global economic system become more internet-native, but it will also become dramatically more automated,” he said. “We are entering a world where, in my view, likely tens or hundreds of billions of AI agents will interact and perform economic functions over the internet.”

He added later that the company has been building systems that support agentic payments.

“In fact, we just went into testnet release of a new capability, the Circle Gateway, that allows for agents to autonomously and programmatically automate cross chain USDC transactions with a transaction cost of $0.00001,” Allaire said.

The company saw its revenue and reserve income reach $770 million in Q4, a 77% increase from the previous year.

Circle saw a net loss from continuing operations reach $70 million in 2025, noting that it was significantly impacted by $424 million worth of stock-based compensation tied to vesting conditions of the company’s initial public offering.

Circle made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange last June and was so popular with investors that NYSE halted trading three times within the first hour. But the company saw its momentum slow in 2025 as the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and investors fretted that it would impact interest earned on the cash reserves that back USDC stablecoins.

WisdomTree said on Tuesday that it’s enabling instant settlement for its tokenized money market fund, indicating its product won’t be limited by Wall Street’s pace any longer.

The shift is expected to reduce “cash drag” associated with settlement delays in traditional markets, while harnessing certain advantages that are innate to digital assets, the institution with $168 billion in assets under management said in a press release.

The arrangement, which also enables round-the-clock trading for the WisdomTree Treasury Money Market Digital Fund (WTGXX), required exemptive relief from the SEC.

On Tuesday, the regulator said it was okay for investors to trade WTGXX’s shares at $1 with a dealer on an intraday basis, regardless of WTGXX’s net asset value. That is typically determined every business day immediately after U.S. markets close.

“The SEC is committed to working with market participants to foster innovation and modernization, especially in enabling the tokenization of our capital markets.” Brian Daly, SEC director of the division of investment management, told Decrypt. “This relief preserves the protections of a regulated money market fund while permitting retail investors intra-day liquidity.”

Although funds registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 have historically functioned as investment vehicles, the SEC’s relief positions WisdomTree’s product as a form of digital cash that can be spent, moved, or traded instantly at any hour.

WisdomTree described that functionality as “unprecedented,” while unlocking the efficiency and liquidity advantages native to digital representations of real-world assets.

WisdomTree noted that its broker-dealer subsidiary gained FINRA approval to engage in principal trading for WTGXX. The company said that enables round-the-clock liquidity for shares in its tokenized money market fund, which can be exchanged for stablecoins.

At the same time, WisdomTree said its rollout “continues dividend accrual” for WTGXX, which involves using blockchain timestamps to track how long investors hold the token. That allows shareholders to earn yield even as WTGXX moves between wallets, WisdomTree said.

WTGXX was valued at $730 million on Tuesday, according to RWA.xyz. It has been issued across nine networks, such as Ethereum and Solana, while offering an annualized percentage yield of 3.5%. Backed by U.S. Treasuries, its shares aim to trade at a value of $1 like a stablecoin.

The development underscores how the SEC is becoming increasingly comfortable with mainstream financial products augmented by their blockchain-based format. In its relief order, the SEC said its green light was “appropriate in the public interest.”

In July, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the agency was committed to modernizing securities rules and regulations enabling financial markets to move on-chain through an initiative called “Project Crypto.”

In the press release, WisdomTree Head of Digital Assets Will Peck indicated approvals from the SEC and FINRA are paving the way for that transition.

“This is a true innovation and improvement in the investor experience, and it demonstrates how blockchain can serve as a new set of rails for capital markets,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication with a comment from the SEC.

A Bitcoin miner that rented $75 of mining power defied the odds by finding a solo block reward, earning more than 3.1 BTC worth around $200,000 early Tuesday. 

The individual rented the minimum 1 Petahash/s (PH) of hash power via Braiins hash power marketplace, which allows users to rent Bitcoin mining capacity directly from the company without needing to install or operate any physical hardware themselves. 

Based on the current hash rate of the Bitcoin network, at that mining capacity, a success would only occur approximately every 1 out of 1.1 million blocks, or about 21 years’ worth of mining, according to estimates from SoloChance.com. 

Solo mining wins are rare, as most Bitcoin blocks are found and awarded to large mining pools that have dedicated massive amounts of computational power to solving cryptographic puzzles, which underpin Bitcoin’s public ledger and network. 

But the act, likened by experts to “playing the lottery,” has provided a handful of jackpot winners of late. In January, two solo Bitcoin miners pulled in more than 3.1 BTC in respective rewards worth around $300,000 at the time. In December, another miner beat the odds, scoring a reward of more than $282,000 based on BTC’s price at that time. 

The feats are even more impressive when you consider the growing hashrate, or the total computational power of the network, which is above 1.1 Zhash/s on average per day according to data from Bitinfo. At this time last year, the network’s overall computational power was around 730 Ehash/s—about 61% of its current capacity.

That growing share may be coming from miners in China or elsewhere, as North American mining pools saw a declining share of computation power in 2025. A portion of that decline can be attributed to pools and miners that had previously been focused on mining BTC shifting their attention to growing demand for AI compute.

For example, publicly traded Bitcoin miners like Bitfarms are completely winding down their mining operations, while others like Riot Platforms are being urged by investors to capitalize on opportunities in AI.

A representative for Braiins did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.