Circle Launches Arc Mainnet Amid Senate Rejection of CLARITY Act

Circle launched its Arc mainnet on Wednesday, just one day after the Senate blocked the CLARITY Act. The launch marks 'one of the biggest launches in the history of the company', according to Circle's CEO Jeremy Allaire.

The mainnet was developed by a founding cohort of validators that includes major financial institutions such as BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Visa, and Mastercard. Interestingly, no crypto-native firms were included in this group.

Circle said the launch with over 100 institutional and ecosystem builders live on the network from day one is 'one of the biggest launches in the history of the company'. The company listed several banks with access to Arc, including BNY Mellon, HSBC, Societe Generale, and State Street. Asset managers Bitwise, BlackRock, and Janus Henderson are also building tokenized products on it.

Allaire emphasized that despite the Senate's rejection of the CLARITY Act, the industry is 'not stopping'. He noted that policy and regulation are ultimately responsive to what's happening in the real economy. Circle completed the genesis mint of its ARC token this week, creating an initial supply of 10 billion tokens.