Circle Cuts 5% of Staff While Posting $226 Million Net Income

By Elena Vasquez

Circle disclosed a workforce reduction of about 5% in its third-quarter earnings release on Wednesday, as net income from continuing operations reached $226 million. The USDC issuer booked $9.1 million in restructuring charges, mainly severance and notice-period payments.

What does the restructuring actually cover?

Circle said the reduction was “designed to better align our organizational structure with our operating model and strategic priorities.” The company recorded $9.1 million in restructuring expenses, mostly cash payments for notice periods, severance, employee benefits and related costs.

A $5.7 million reversal of stock-based compensation partly offset that expense because departing employees forfeited unvested shares. The release does not disclose the employee count, affected teams or a savings target, so neither per-worker savings nor the full cash effect can be calculated.

How strong were the results?

Circle reported net income from continuing operations of $226 million, up 5% from a year earlier. Total revenue and reserve income rose 17% to $865 million, while adjusted EBITDA climbed 85% year over year to $317 million.

Much of the growth came from outside the core USDC reserve business. Other revenue rose to $207 million, including $182 million from the presale of ARC, the token for the Arc blockchain.

Reserve income, the interest Circle earns on assets backing USDC and its largest revenue source, fell 8% to $658 million as interest rates on those reserves declined. The quarter therefore combined sharply higher adjusted earnings with a weaker core rate-income engine, while token-sale revenue supplied much of the difference.

Did USDC gain usage?

Allaire did not mention the cuts in his results commentary or in his Nov. 4, 2026 post, which called Q3 a big quarter for Circle. He said USDC carried 79% of all stablecoin transaction volume, up from 66% a year earlier.

Circle’s payments network ended the quarter at $41 billion at an annualized run rate, up 15-fold. His post added three measures:

• $13.9 trillion moved on-chain, up 49%.
• A record $208 billion of USDC was minted and redeemed, equal to about $2.3 billion every day.
• Arc mainnet was live with more than 100 institutions and applications.

Allaire wrote: “In January, the GENIUS Act takes effect and regulated digital dollars go mainstream. Every layer of our platform is live and ready for it.” The January timing gives the company a concrete regulatory deadline, although the release provides no additional implementation timetable.

USDC gained transaction share, but its broader market position did not strengthen on every measure. Market share slipped to 27%, while average circulation rose 8% year over year to $73.3 billion and ended the quarter flat at $73.9 billion.

Why is Circle expanding during the cuts?

In September, Circle launched the public mainnet of the Arc blockchain. BlackRock, DTCC and Visa served as permissioned validators, a structure that combines a public network with named institutional validators.

Allaire said in October that Circle plans to enter about 40 emerging and developing markets. Circle then partnered with payments-technology firm ACI Worldwide to pilot USDC settlement on Colombia’s instant-payments network.

The release did not name the 40 target markets or give a deployment timetable, and it did not quantify the staffing needed for expansion. Those omissions leave the operational scale of the cost reduction uncertain even as Circle plans more network and market expansion.

How does this compare with crypto layoffs?

The reduction followed a broader 2026 wave of crypto-industry job cuts, with companies citing weaker markets, artificial intelligence, automation or some combination. Circle, by contrast, tied its reduction to organizational alignment rather than naming weaker markets, AI or automation as drivers.

• Coinbase: Cut 14% of its workforce in May; CEO Brian Armstrong cited the crypto downturn and the company’s adoption of AI.
• Ethereum Foundation: Cut 20% of its staff in June as part of a reorganization.
• Custody firm BitGo: Cut 15% in June to focus on AI and stablecoins.
• Exchange Luno: Cut one-fifth of its global staff in July, citing automation.
• Crypto ETF issuer Bitwise: Cut 14% of its staff in August.

Those disclosures do not establish that Circle faces the same operational pressures as its peers, and its per-employee savings remain unknown. Circle nevertheless belongs to a wider industry retrenchment rather than an isolated layoff case. The next checkpoint is January, when Allaire says the GENIUS Act takes effect, a regulatory deadline that will test Circle’s claim that its platform is ready for regulated digital dollars.