Beyond Stablecoins: The Rise of the Internet Financial System
Founder’s Letter
Over the past year, Circle has crossed into a new chapter. Our initial public offering and the passage of landmark stablecoin rules in the US and across major economies have validated our founding vision and cemented USDC and Circle as pillars of the emerging internet-native financial system.
What seemed audacious a decade ago — a world where money could move freely as a software object on the public internet — is now reality. The global regulatory apparatus has converged on the legitimacy of full-reserve digital dollars. Enterprises, governments, and financial institutions are embracing the idea that open protocols for money and value exchange will power the next era of global economic coordination.
This is the beginning of what I see as the economic operating system for the internet. Public blockchains are evolving from experimental compute environments into trusted platforms for tamper-resistant data, verifiable transactions, programmable contracts, and globally distributed governance. They are becoming the substrate on which trillions of dollars in value, and ultimately trillions of transactions, will run.
Today, Circle stands at the center of this shift.
Explore the report
Regulated stablecoins like USDC are helping drive the creation of a new internet financial system that is doing for money what previous generations of internet innovation have done for data, communications, and other industries. In this report, we show how this upleveling of finance can become a foundation for more dynamic, adaptive, and inclusive financial services worldwide.
Banks, businesses, and institutions can uplevel how they operate
Digital asset markets and traditional markets are converging
Stablecoin payments are going mainstream
Aid can now reach recipients with less cost and friction
We are helping more economic activity move onchain
Stablecoins are moving inside the regulated financial system
Powering the foundation of an open, programmable economy
