• Circle launched Arc, a new blockchain network and native token designed specifically for institutional finance.
• Arc, which aims to provide banks, corporations, and treasury teams with faster settlement, raised $222 million in a presale led by Andreessen Horowitz.
• Alongside Arc, Circle introduced its new Agent Stack tools.

Stablecoin issuer and infrastructure company Circle launched a presale of a new token this week that raised $222 million. The new token, Arc, is the native token of Circle’s newest blockchain and the 10 billion tokens released give Arc a network valuation of $3 billion.

Andreessen Horowitz was the lead investor in the round, contributing $75 million. Other investors include BlackRock, Apollo Funds, Intercontinental Exchange, SBI Group, Janus Henderson Investors, Standard Chartered Ventures, General Catalyst, Marshall Wace, ARK Invest, IDG Capital, Haun Ventures and CoinDesk owner Bullish.

Circle holds 25% of the initial Arc tokens released, while 60% of the tokens will be distributed to users to build on, use, and contribute to the Arc network; 15% of the tokens will be held in long-term reserves.

The new expansion will help Circle diversify beyond its existing USDC stablecoin, which the company launched in 2018. As Ali Yahya and Noah Levine explained in a blog post on a16z crypto, “While USDC has become the trusted digital dollar for banks, corporations, and financial institutions seeking the speed of crypto without its volatility, there remains a problem. The internet infrastructure which USDC runs on today wasn’t built with big institutions in mind. It was built for individuals and crypto enthusiasts.”

Arc is essentially Circle’s attempt to build a blockchain network designed specifically for large financial institutions and global payments. Instead of being built for crypto traders or retail users, it is designed for companies that need to move money quickly, securely, and within regulatory requirements.

Arc can help treasury teams manage and move money in dollars using blockchain infrastructure, while still maintaining many of the controls and oversight traditional finance requires. With Arc, transactions settle almost instantly, privacy settings can be adjusted, and the network is run by approved institutional operators instead of anonymous participants.

“[Blockchain] infrastructure is becoming as important as mobile operating systems or cloud platforms,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said in an interview with CNBC. “We want to build an operating system that has many, many stakeholders in it … major companies who are running the infrastructure with us and who ultimately help to govern it.”

Arc will benefit from Circle’s expertise in operating USDC, which has grown to become one of the largest stablecoins with a market capitalization of over $77 billion. This network effect gives Circle a stronger starting position than other new blockchain projects that launch without established customers, products, or liquidity.

Along with the debut of Arc, Circle is launching the Circle Agent Stack, the company’s new chain-and protocol-agnostic open infrastructure designed for the agentic economy. At launch, Agent Stack includes three products that enable agents as autonomous actors: Agent Wallets to allow for controlled agent access to USDC and ERC-20 tokens, Agent Marketplace for discovering agentic services, and Circle Command Line Interface for executing agent financial actions through natural language.

Combined, the new token and agentic tools show that Circle is positioning itself for an agentic commerce future in which banks will be powered by autonomous software agents operating on blockchain infrastructure. Instead of just focusing on stablecoin issuance, Circle is building the underlying rails, governance structure, and tooling needed for banks and AI agents to move money, execute transactions, and interact with financial systems in real time.

Photo by Laura Lumimaa

• bunq is launching a live BaaS use case, partnering with Blockrise to offer Bitcoin-friendly bank accounts with embedded banking services.
• Blockrise users will gain regulated banking benefits, including fiat deposit protection up to €100,000 under the Dutch Deposit Guarantee Scheme via bunq’s license.
• BaaS enables crypto–bank convergence in which banks provide compliant infrastructure while crypto platforms own the customer relationship.

European neobank bunq is going live with its BaaS offering, partnering with Bitcoin platform Blockrise to offer users Bitcoin-friendly bank accounts. 

Netherlands-based Blockrise users will gain access to Bitcoin services alongside embedded bank accounts. By leveraging bunq’s European banking license, fiat deposits will be protected up to €100,000 under the Dutch Deposit Guarantee Scheme.

“Up to now, Dutch Bitcoin users had to choose between security and convenience. With bunq’s infrastructure, they get both—a bank account that works seamlessly with Bitcoin, protected by the Dutch Deposit Guarantee Scheme,” said Blockrise Founder and CEO Jos Lazet. “We are proud to be the first-ever Bitcoin platform that is able to offer full bank accounts to our clients.”

The partnership marks the first live use case of bunq’s BaaS offering, which integrates bunq’s financial infrastructure into a business’ existing product by building on bunq’s open API. bunq anticipates that its BaaS service will offer users better, safer products. Because bunq handles the complex compliance and security requirements involved in offering bank accounts, businesses are able to focus on their core competencies and move with more agility.

The collaboration also reflects a convergence between traditional banking and digital asset platforms. As regulatory frameworks mature in Europe, licensed banks like bunq are becoming key enablers for crypto firms looking to offer more complete financial services. With BaaS-crypto partnerships, banks provide the compliant infrastructure, while crypto platforms own the customer relationship, which blurs the line between decentralized finance and centralized finance.

Founded in 2012, Amsterdam-based bunq offers both retail and commercial accounts with a range of tools, including budgeting and term deposits for consumers, and expense management and payment acceptance tools for businesses. Earlier this year, bunq applied for a US banking license for the second time, after it withdrew its original application in 2023.

• Banking Circle launched fiat-to-stablecoin and stablecoin-to-fiat settlement, enabling banks to move funds seamlessly across traditional and blockchain rails with instant settlement and regulatory traceability.
• The move comes days after Banking Circle received its CASP license, which positions Banking Circle to embed stablecoin capabilities directly into a bank’s existing infrastructure.
• Stablecoins are quickly emerging as an always-on settlement layer that is becoming standard in cross-border payments.

European cross-border payments fintech Banking Circle is narrowing the gap between stablecoin and fiat today. The fintech is launching stablecoin settlement services, a suite of fiat-to-stablecoin and stablecoin-to-fiat capabilities that will facilitate the movement of funds, regardless of whether they sit on bank rails or blockchain rails.

The announcement comes days after Banking Circle received a Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF). The newly minted license will allow Banking Circle to expand from cross-border fiat services into digital asset services.

“The award of our CASP license is an important milestone for Banking Circle, as well as for the broader payments ecosystem,” said Banking Circle CEO Laust Bertelsen. “Stablecoins have fast evolved from a peripheral innovation into core infrastructure for cross-border settlement, treasury management, and financial inclusion.”

Banking Circle will integrate its new stablecoin settlement service into banks’ existing infrastructure to help them take advantage of stablecoin rails. The new tools will offer increased security, lower risk, and more convenience than traditional global settlement rails, creating efficiencies for banks.

After they integrate with Banking Circle’s core platform, clients will be able to interoperate between fiat currencies and leading stablecoins, including USDC, USDG, and EURI. Leveraging stablecoin rails, Banking Circle will offer instant settlement and full regulatory traceability.

“We have spent years building the financial infrastructure that enables more than 750 payment companies, financial institutions, and marketplaces to efficiently move and convert over €1.5 trillion annually across the globe,” said Banking Circle Chief Digital Asset Officer Kirit Bhatia. “Stablecoins are a natural extension of that infrastructure and central to our mission of eliminating unnecessary cost and complexity through technology.”

Founded in 2013, Banking Circle was acquired by private equity firm EQT in 2018 for $300 million. Headquartered in Luxembourg and regulated by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the bank is fully licensed and serves as a correspondent bank offering multi-currency bank accounts and virtual IBANs as well as bank connections for local clearing and cross-border payments.

Banking Circle has branches in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK, and subsidiaries in Liechtenstein, Singapore and Australia. 

Banking Circle’s announcement shows that banks across the globe are rethinking the underlying infrastructure of payments. Stablecoins are emerging as an always-on settlement layer that can complement traditional correspondent banking networks. As banks across the globe integrate stablecoin payments rails into their platforms, and as the global stablecoin market reaches approximately $293 billion, it is becoming clear that stablecoin rails are slowly becoming a standard part of cross-border payments, rather than an alternative.

• Moomoo launches API Skills to connect personal AI agents to trading and allow investors to use natural language to build and execute strategies without coding.
• The new tools include strategy validation, intent-to-execution translation, and 24/7 market monitoring inside a pro trading environment.
• Moomoo enables external AI agents via APIs, giving users control, flexibility, and local data security.

Online investment and trading platform Moomoo is launching agentic investing tools this week. The California-based company has launched API Skills to allow retail investors to connect their personal AI agents directly to Moomoo’s infrastructure.

With API Skills, investors can use natural language commands to create structured, executable investment strategies without coding. The tool integrates with multiple AI agent frameworks, enabling always-on agents that act as 24/7 trading assistants that continuously interpret market data, monitor conditions, and prepare trades based on a user’s goals within a professional-grade trading environment.

“With Moomoo API Skills, we are reducing the technical barriers that once stood between an idea and its execution, enabling clients’ personal AI agents to connect directly with our platform while ensuring investors retain full control of every decision,” said Moomoo Canada CEO Michael Arbus.

The new tool not only helps non-technical users automate their trading decisions, but it also helps investors save time by streamlining more complex workflows. Included in the API Skills are: automated strategy validation that allows users to review, refine, and validate their strategies before deploying them; intent-driven development that translates natural language commands into structured logic to execute the move in the market; and a volatility monitor that detects market shifts 24/7.

With Moomoo’s API Skills, all trading credentials and sensitive account data remain within the user’s local environment instead of passing through third-party AI servers. The new capability also allows users to test and explore their agent’s logic using virtual funds before moving the logic into the wild.

Moomoo isn’t the only trading platform empowering users with agentic trading. Last month, brokerage platform Public introduced AI agents to automate their portfolio strategies with AI. The two approaches are slightly different, however. While Public’s agents are native, consumer-facing agents geared toward retail investors, Moomoo is an API layer for builders that lets external AI agents plug into trading.

Founded in 2018, Moomoo has 29 million investors across Singapore, Australia, Japan, Canada, Malaysia, and New Zealand.