Morning Minute: Circle Stock Soars After Q1 Beat, $222M Arc Raise

Morning Minute is simply a regular newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The investigation and opinions expressed are his ain and bash not needfully bespeak those of Decrypt. And check retired our new regular quality show covering each of the apical stories successful 5 minutes oregon less, downloadable connected Apple Pod oregon Spotify.

GM!

Today’s apical news:

• Crypto majors, equities autumn up of today’s CPI; BTC astatine $80.7k
• Circle banal jumps 15% aft Q1 net beat, $222M Arc raise
• STRC regains par, moves capable for 1,400 BTC successful purchases
• Kraken genitor Payward raises caller superior astatine $20B valuation
• Hyperliquid’s archetypal ETF (THYP) goes unrecorded for trading today

💰 Circle Beats Q1 and Raises $222M for Arc

Circle reported Q1 2026 net Monday alongside a large astonishment disclosure: the stablecoin issuer raised $222 cardinal successful a presale of its Arc blockchain token.

The Arc rise was done astatine a $3 cardinal afloat diluted valuation, backed by a who’s who of organization finance: a16z crypto led astatine $75 million, and BlackRock, Apollo, Intercontinental Exchange, ARK Invest, Haun Ventures, Standard Chartered Ventures, and respective others participated. Circle simultaneously published the Arc whitepaper and launched Circle Agent Stack, a afloat suite of autonomous AI cause outgo tools built connected Arc’s infrastructure.

Arc is simply a nationalist Layer-1 blockchain built specifically for organization finance, with USDC arsenic autochthonal state token, sub-second finality, opt-in privacy, EVM compatible. The testnet processed 166 cardinal transactions astatine half-second finality with near-perfect uptime done February. And Arc volition beryllium quantum-resistant astatine mainnet launch.

But portion the marketplace liked the Arc news, it loved Circle’s earnings. It was a large beat, featuring:

• $694M full gross and reserve income (+20% YoY)
• $77.0B USDC successful circulation (+28% YoY)
• $21.5T successful USDC onchain transaction measurement (+263% YoY)

CEO Jeremy Allaire commented “We’re entering the operating strategy business.” Circle banal jumped 16% connected the day.

Saylor Just Explained What “Selling Bitcoin” Actually Means for Strategy

Michael Saylor spent Monday walking backmost the market’s speechmaking of his Q1 net telephone comment, and successful doing so, gave the astir elaborate mentation of Strategy’s superior operation to date.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Saylor called the interest implicit Bitcoin income “a large thing burger from an economical constituent of view.” His clarification: if Strategy were to merchantability capable Bitcoin to money each of its dividends for an full year, it would simultaneously beryllium buying 20 Bitcoin for each 1 it sold. “So it’s nary antithetic than buying 20 Bitcoin and selling nary Bitcoin,” he said. He went connected to stock much reasoning: “If the marketplace thought we would ne'er merchantability it, the recognition standing agencies would say, ‘Well, past I conjecture it’s not an asset.’”

The existent mechanics, per Saylor: immoderate Bitcoin merchantability would beryllium a taxation nonaccomplishment harvesting maneuver. Strategy recorded a $12.54 cardinal unrealized nonaccomplishment successful Q1 arsenic Bitcoin fell 23% from $87,500 to $67,700. Under FASB’s mark-to-market rules, that nonaccomplishment flowed straight done the income statement, and generated a $2.2 cardinal deferred taxation asset. Selling a tiny magnitude of Bitcoin present would crystalize those superior losses, transportation them backmost against anterior gains, and make a existent taxation benefit.

Strategy did precisely this successful December 2022: sold 704 BTC astatine $16,776, instantly repurchased 810 BTC 2 days later, and booked the taxation benefit. The 2026 mentation would beryllium larger successful dollar presumption but identical successful structure.

Notably, Strategy besides disclosed Monday it resumed buying, picking up 535 BTC for $43 cardinal astatine an mean of $80,340 past week. And with STRC backmost astatine its $100 par value, the marketplace is expecting a importantly bigger bargain coming this week…

💰 Kraken Is Raising Again astatine a $20B Valuation

Payward, Kraken’s genitor company, is raising caller capital at a $20 cardinal valuation arsenic it accelerates its acquisition and infrastructure buildout up of a planned IPO.

The circular comes aft a agelong of assertive M&A which included:

• the $1.5 cardinal NinjaTrader acquisition successful 2025 gave it US retail futures
• the $550 cardinal Bitnomial woody successful April gave it the afloat CFTC derivatives stack, and
• the $600 cardinal Reap acquisition this week added stablecoin outgo infrastructure crossed Southeast Asia.

Payward has besides filed for an OCC nationalist spot institution charter, applied to go a Federal Reserve subordinate slope done Kraken Financial, and confidentially filed an S-1 with the SEC.

Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said astatine Consensus Miami past week that the speech is “80% ready” to spell public, though the IPO remains contingent connected marketplace conditions. The institution generated $2.2 cardinal successful adjusted gross successful 2025, a 33% increase, with asset-based services (custody, yield, financing) outpacing trading commissions for the archetypal time.

📈 Bitcoin Flashes Most Bullish Technical Signal of 2026

Bitcoin flashed a aureate transverse connected Monday, a method awesome that occurs erstwhile the 50-day elemental moving mean crosses supra its 200-day elemental moving average.

It’s the archetypal aureate transverse since June 2025, and the setup looks much similar the 2023 and 2024 versions than the 1 that preceded the all-time high. The October 2023 transverse happened astir $28-30K and preceded a 157% rally. The May 2024 transverse formed astir $60K and preceded a tally to $100K. Both occurred good disconnected large bottoms with the inclination recovering, precisely the operation successful spot today, with BTC climbing from its February debased adjacent $60K to $81K.

As for the aureate bull lawsuit from here: the Clarity Act passing by July 4th, Saylor’s STRC moving to semi-monthly successful July, advancement connected the Quantum beforehand and rotation from golden / equities. If that drawstring of events occurs, the 2026 aureate transverse whitethorn enactment the 2023 mentation to shame…

💡 OpenAI’s Daybreak Could Be the Exploit Prevention Tool DeFi Has Been Waiting For

OpenAI launched Daybreak Monday, a dedicated AI level for cyber defence built connected GPT-5.5 and Codex that tin scan codebases, place vulnerabilities, validate patches, and determination from find to remediation successful hours alternatively than weeks.

Daybreak rolls retired done OpenAI’s Trusted Access for Cyber program, with vetted teams getting entree to GPT-5.5-Cyber, a mentation with less restrictions connected security-sensitive tasks including binary reverse engineering, malware analysis, and proof-of-concept generation. The motorboat puts OpenAI successful nonstop contention with Anthropic’s Mythos, which recovered astir 300 vulnerabilities successful Firefox unsocial and tens of thousands crossed large bundle systems.

And possibly this is precisely what crypto needs. April 2026 was DeFi’s worst period successful implicit a year, with $770 cardinal mislaid crossed 30+ incidents, and each large exploit tracing backmost to a azygous privileged admin cardinal that passed modular audits without being flagged. Lazarus Group, liable for 76% of 2026 DeFi losses per Chainalysis, is believed to tally automated tooling that scans for precisely these configurations faster than quality reviewers tin drawback them.

Continuous AI-powered astute declaration auditing, moving against each deployment alternatively than erstwhile earlier launch, is the missing furniture that Daybreak is positioned to provide. Let’s equip the achromatic hats earlier the achromatic hats bash immoderate much damage…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are reddish up of today’s CPI print; BTC -0.5% astatine $80.7k; ETH -2% astatine $2,285; SOL adjacent astatine $95; HYPE -2% astatine $40.85
• B (+34%), STABLE (+11%) and NIGHT (+5%) led apical movers
• Oil rebounded different 3% astatine $99; Gold +1% astatine $4,696
• Stock futures are reddish with the Nasdaq down 0.8%
• MoonPay acquired Dawn Labs connected Monday and launched Dawn CLI arsenic an AI trading instrumentality that lets users picture a strategy successful plain English and person it automatically researched, coded, backtested, and executed; launching archetypal connected Polymarket with different venues to follow
• Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade went unrecorded connected Monday, with motorboat coming arsenic soon arsenic Q3 2026 if each goes well; Alpenglow reduces transaction finality from 12.8 seconds to 100-150 milliseconds and frees ~75% of existent artifact abstraction consumed by on-chain validator votes
• Grayscale filed for the first-ever spot ETF for a privateness coin, converting its Zcash Trust into a spot ETF
• Arthur Hayes argued that BTC bottomed astatine $60k and that caller highs are inevitable successful his latest blog

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $27M successful nett inflows on Monday; the ETH ETFs saw $17M successful outflows
• Strategy bought 535 BTC ($43M) past week, though STRC generated capable to bargain 1,400 BTC connected Monday
• Bitmine added 26,659 ETH (~$62M) past week with full holdings astatine astir 4.3% of full supply

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mixed; DOGE -1%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -3%, PENGU -4%, TRUMP -3%, BONK -5%, SPX -4%, FARTCOIN -6%
• RKC (+84x), Giga (+70%), and Useless (+44%) led notable movers

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Hyperliquid’s archetypal ETF via 21Shares launches today with ticker THYP
• Pavel Durov introduced a caller toolchain for astute contracts connected TON, replacing its existing fragmented tooling and volition beryllium AI-ready
• Aptos will launch an encrypted mempool to forestall censorship and frontrunning

🚚 What is happening successful NFTs?

• NFT leaders were reddish down 3% crossed the board; Punks -3% astatine 29 ETH, BAYC -3% astatine 10.4 ETH, Pudgy -3% astatine 5.39 ETH; Hypurr’s -7% astatine 295 HYPE
• Gift of Time (+45%), Normies (+7%) and Squiggles (+6%) led notable movers