Postingan

The USDC you hold is earning interest for someone else Circle just finished its Q2 earnings call, and two pieces of news came out. One is that the USDC cooperation agreement with Coinbase has been renewed with no changes in terms; USDC will continue to be deeply integrated into Coinbase's various product lines, but the specific revenue-sharing ratio was not disclosed. The other is that the CFO clearly stated there will be no quarterly dividends, basically saying that the returns invested back into the platform far exceed paying dividends to shareholders. Let's look at the numbers first. This quarter, Circle's total revenue plus reserve income was $701 million, a 7% year-over-year increase. At the end of the quarter, USDC circulation was $73.3 billion. Putting these two numbers together, the situation becomes clear. USDC is not printed out of thin air; it is exchanged by someone for real US dollars. You put in 1 dollar, Circle gives you 1 USDC, and that 1 dollar is used to buy short-term US Treasuries and reverse repos to earn interest. With a $73.3 billion pool, roughly calculated at current short-term interest rates, the annual interest alone is in the tens of billions of dollars. But the USDC you hold earns zero interest. This is not criticism; this is the business model of stablecoins itself. What you get in exchange is liquidity and instant usability, at the cost of giving up the interest. Whether you want to exchange or not is your own choice. There is an even more interesting layer. Circle itself cannot keep all this interest; a large portion must be shared with Coinbase according to the distribution agreement. So the renewal of this agreement is very important to Circle, and the unchanged terms mean this cost has neither improved nor worsened. The market was previously worried that Coinbase might use negotiations to raise prices, but this pending issue has been settled for now. #PayrollsDropCPIFocus #AIMemoryStressTest #SpaceXUnlockRebound