Circle Valuation Surges as USDC Market Cap Expands
USDC (USDC)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
bitcoinethereumnews.com reports that Circle's valuation has more than doubled, climbing from $54 billion to $90 billion. This jump coincides with USDC's market capitalization growing from $71.53 billion to $73.55 billion, according to data from crypto analytics firm CryptoQuant. The parallel movement of these two metrics is fueling talk of sustained valuation growth across trading desks.
Circle's valuation increase appears directly tied to the speed at which USDC is expanding rather than being an isolated market quirk. Investors seem to be pricing Circle's worth largely around the amount of USDC it can keep in circulation. As the stablecoin's supply grows, Circle's revenue potential from reserves and transaction flow also increases.
USDC serves as a widely used dollar-pegged asset across trading pairs, decentralized finance protocols, and liquidity bridges. Circle remains responsible for anchoring USDC to the US dollar and connecting it to traditional finance rails. While trading activity has picked up, overall volume remains thin compared to what typically accompanies such a valuation swing.
This gap suggests market enthusiasm may be running slightly ahead of actual trading demand. Broader crypto market conditions could shift quickly and interrupt this current momentum. Traders are watching to see if stablecoin growth continues to translate into real valuation gains.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for USDC, measured when this story was written up on 28 August 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
USDC is trading at $0.9998 with a 24-hour buy ratio of 49.9%, indicating a near-even split between buyers and sellers. The 1-hour buy ratio stands at 46.8%, which is lower than the 4-hour ratio of 48.4%, suggesting that short-term buying pressure is fading relative to the recent four-hour window. Volume delta measures the difference between buy and sell volume; negative deltas of -$5,359,782 (1h) and -$15,488,128 (4h) show that selling pressure has outweighed buying pressure in the immediate short term. However, the 24-hour volume delta is -$4,823,859, indicating that over the full day, net selling has slightly exceeded net buying. Despite this, the cumulative volume delta (CVD) for the 24-hour close is positive at +$93,812,338, reflecting that total buy volume exceeded total sell volume over the longer period. Spot volume for the day reached $3,253,230,300 across 574,161 trades.
The latest daily buy ratio of 50.2% sits at the 73rd percentile of the last 322 days, against a median of 48.4% - stronger buying than most days.
Twenty-four hours later
What USDC did over the 24 hours after the story broke. The market moves for its own reasons; this is what happened, not what the story caused.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for USDC, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, the average buy ratio was 49.4%, making the current 24-hour ratio of 49.9% slightly higher by 0.6 percentage points. Weekly trading volume was 1.01 times the average, indicating that activity levels were nearly identical to the weekly norm. While the 24-hour period saw net selling with a volume delta of -$4,823,859, the total volume delta for the eight-day period was -$261,494,094. This shows that while the current day is slightly more balanced than the weekly average, the broader trend over the week has been dominated by net selling. The price change over the eight-day period remained at 0.0%, confirming that despite valuation headlines, the spot price has not moved.