Circle stock slips despite BlackRock, Mastercard, Visa announcement

The Circle Internet Group (NYSE: CRCL) stock slipped more than 6% to trade as low as $79.15 on Sep. 16 despite a major announcement involving Wall Street giants such as BlackRock, Mastercard, and Visa. The stablecoin giant today announced the public mainnet launch of Arc, a layer-1 blockchain network. An open blockchain, Arc is purpose-built for payments, trading, and agentic economic activity. Circle said the Arc testnet has processed more than 700 million transactions in under a year. Related: Ripple legal chief bullish on XRP despite CLARITY failure, here's why Arc's founding validator cohort includes BlackRock, Mastercard, and Visa  Arc launches with native integration into Circle’s full-stack platform, including the USDC stablecoin. Fees on the Arc blockchain are paid in USDC, with no volatile native token required. As per the onchain analytics platform DeFiLlama, USDC has a market cap of $73.65 billion and accounts for 24% of the total stablecoin market. Total Stablecoins Market Cap, Source: DeFiLlama Circle co-founder, chairman, and CEO Jeremy Allaire called Arc "the single most significant launch in Circle's history since USDC itself." BlackRock, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa, and Worldpay (now Global Payments) are Arc’s founding validator cohort. These financial giants will participate in the operation of the network itself, as per the statement. “As digital assets infrastructure matures, we expect to see certain networks increasingly designed around the needs of specific markets and use cases," said BlackRock's global head of digital assets, Robbie Mitchnick. "Purpose-built blockchains can help accelerate adoption of digital asset use cases, and Arc appears clearly well positioned to serve stablecoin and payment use cases at scale." More on TheStreet Roundtable: Billionaire breaks silence on CoinEx shutdown $480 million in crypto gets wiped out after CLARITY Act fails Bitcoin ETFs post worst day since June as CLARITY stalls Circle stock slips despite bullish news Despite the bullish news, the Circle stock slipped 6% today because it is yet to recover from the U.S. Senate failing to advance the CLARITY Act on Sep. 15. Though the Senate's cloture vote failure was a setback for the entire crypto industry, it was particularly disappointing for Circle. Progress on the bill is crucial for the company's stablecoin business. But yield-bearing stablecoins have proven to be among the most contentious issues in the legislation. The banking industry's concern about deposit flight driven by the appeal of stablecoins is among the key reasons the bill failed to advance. The Circle stock was trading at $81.30 at the time of writing. Related: Coinbase CEO says crypto can’t wait on Congress after CLARITY vote fails