Circle Minting Frenzy: USDC Surges to $74 Billion Amid Tether Showdown

Circle has minted roughly 5 billion USDC over the past week, according to onchain trackers. This is one of its largest weekly issuance pushes yet.

The circulating supply of USDC now stands at about $74 billion in August, versus Tether's $183 billion market cap. The two stablecoins together account for around 83% of a total stablecoin market worth $304 billion.

Circle has leaned on transaction volume as its counterargument to Tether's larger float. USDC moved $18.3 trillion in 2025 against USDT's $13.3 trillion, and carried roughly 70% of adjusted stablecoin transaction volume in the first half of the year despite running on a fraction of the supply.

The latest print comes just as Circle has taken on a new role as technical deployer for Hyperliquid. The derivatives exchange activated its 'AQAv2' upgrade today to route reserve yield on roughly $5 billion of USDC sitting on its platform into buybacks of its HYPE token.