Circle CEO Says Not to Trust Reports of Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase Stablecoin Venture
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Circle Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Allaire brushed aside concerns over recent reports that Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase are joining forces on their own stablecoin platform, saying the news should not be taken at face value.
At a Circle investor meeting on June 4, Allaire said the company already has a deep partnership with Coinbase centered on the USDC stablecoin. Circle also maintains strong relationships with major global payments companies including Visa, Mastercard and Stripe, he said.
He highlighted existing traction, saying Stripe's stablecoin transactions and a substantial portion of Visa's payment settlement activity are already processed using USDC. Stablecoins are not a business that succeeds simply by issuing a new form of money, he said. Several large companies have already tried launching their own stablecoins, but struggled to build meaningful transaction volume and networks.
Most of the roughly $22 trillion in on-chain transactions currently takes place on USDC, according to Allaire. Newer stablecoins, by contrast, have yet to reach meaningful transaction levels.
Allaire also outlined his vision for Circle's new Layer 1 blockchain, Arc. He described Arc as an operating system for the internet economy that would handle everything from money movement and asset tokenization to real-world assets and payments between AI agents on a single infrastructure.
