Circle Internet Group Launches Arc Mainnet With USDC at Protocol Level

The Fed raised its policy rate by 0.25 points to 3.75–4.00%. The vote was unanimous at 12–0, and 16 of the 18 participants expect at least one more rate hike before the end of the year. Major U.S. banks have raised their prime rate from 6.75% to 7.00%, and the extra cost is already flowing through to credit cards and variable-rate business loans. Homeowners who locked in 30-year fixed mortgages at rates in the 2–3% range during the pandemic's low-rate era, however, will not see their payments rise right away, while those buying now face the 30-year fixed average of 6.76% that Freddie Mac reported as of September 10, 2026, widening the divide between generations. In San Francisco, two economies coexist: AI companies and those with stock-based compensation on one side, and early-stage startups funding themselves through loans along with restaurants, retailers and freelancers on the other. Higher rates are a headwind for Bitcoin on the liquidity front, but for stablecoin issuers that hold short-term U.S. Treasuries as reserve assets, they are a driver of expanding interest income.

Circle Internet Group launched Arc, a purpose-built open Layer 1 blockchain for financial markets, as its public mainnet. The network integrates Circle's USDC and EURC stablecoins for payments, FX, trading, lending, and asset issuance with dollar-denominated gas fees, and is backed by an institutional validator set that includes BlackRock, DTCC, Mastercard, and Visa. More than 100 ecosystem partners, including banks, payment networks, asset managers, custodians, DeFi protocols, and wallets, are participating at launch. Arc pulls several existing Circle products into one stack, from USDC and EURC to Circle Payments Network and StableFX, so the group now also operates the transaction layer where those tokens move, trade and settle. Circle Internet Group has a US$21.6b market cap and a software industry classification.

Regarding the issue of the Japanese yen stablecoin JPYC's price diverging from its roughly 1 yen peg, JPYC President Noritaka Okabe responded to an interview with NADA NEWS on September 18. JPYC was listed on the South Korean crypto exchange Upbit on September 17, and immediately afterward 1 JPYC rose to a level exceeding 2 yen. Arbitrage trades, in which coins issued at 1 yen were sold in the higher-priced market, occurred one after another, and the circulating supply swelled to approximately 4.26 billion JPYC as of 9 a.m. on the 18th, about 2.2 times the previous day's level. Okabe revealed that issuance surged and inventory ran short in the middle of the night, and that employees took on overnight work due to a sharp increase in account applications, and he expressed his gratitude to the employees. He also said he had no knowledge at all of the Upbit listing and had not thought the first day's trading volume would exceed 30 billion yen. Noting that although it is a stablecoin compliant with Japanese regulations, not a single domestic electronic payment method operator has yet begun trading it, he expressed hope for trading to start at an early date. He explained that because JPYC Inc. always receives 1 yen at the time of issuance, it can be redeemed regardless of the secondary market price, and he called on users to use it with peace of mind.