The cryptocurrency market is still digesting high interest rates and regulatory uncertainty, but there has been a significant advancement in stablecoin infrastructure.

On September 16, Circle officially launched the Arc public mainnet. This Layer 1, introduced by Circle, did not adopt the traditional native token payment for Gas commonly seen in public chains. Instead, it directly uses USDC to pay network fees and focuses on payment, foreign exchange, trading, lending, and RWA as its main application directions.

What is even more noteworthy is that Arc is not a public chain solely aimed at crypto-native users.

The first batch of participating institutions announced by Circle includes BlackRock, DTCC, Mastercard, Visa, ICE, Standard Chartered, Galaxy, and more than 100 institutions and ecosystem participants have already gone live on the mainnet or participated in ecosystem building.

This makes the launch of Arc more like a public test of the stablecoin financial infrastructure.​​​​​​​

First, a summary

• Circle Arc public mainnet launched, USDC used directly as a Gas payment asset;
• Arc supports sub-second finality, focusing on payments, FX, RWA, lending, and on-chain trading;
• Institutions like BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard are involved as validators or in ecosystem building;
• Over 100 applications and institutional participants are live on the mainnet or exploring it;
• At the same time, BTC is still affected by high interest rates, regulatory uncertainty, and ETF fund fluctuations, showing more pronounced structural differentiation in funding.

The truly special aspect of Arc is not just that it adds another L1

In the past few years, a large number of Layer 1s have emerged in the market.

However, Arc's positioning is clearly different.

Circle has not focused on "recreating a universal public chain" but has instead designed the network directly around the US dollar stablecoin and the financial market.

Users can directly use USDC to pay Gas without needing to hold a highly volatile native token to complete a payment. At the same time, Arc supports sub-second finality and integrates assets like USDC, EURC, tokenized funds, and RWA into the same infrastructure.

This means that the role of stablecoins in Arc has undergone a transformation:

They are not just traded assets but have begun to serve as the pricing and settlement tools for on-chain financial activities.

Circle has also integrated services like StableFX and Circle Payments Network into Arc, with goals including cross-border payments, foreign exchange settlement, and the flow of institutional funds.

Traditional financial institutions are beginning to stand on the other side of the "chain"

The most noteworthy aspect of Arc is not the number of ecosystem projects but the structure of the participants.

The founding validators announced by Circle include BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, Visa, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, and others.

Meanwhile, BlackRock's BUIDL and Circle USYC tokenized funds have already entered the Arc application system.

This actually corresponds to a change path in the RWA market over the past few years:

First, move traditional assets onto the chain, then find the financial infrastructure capable of supporting these assets.

The problem that Arc attempts to solve is precisely the latter.

If more treasury funds, money market funds, securities, and cross-border payments use stablecoins for settlement in the future, then the public chain itself may become part of traditional financial infrastructure.

However, market funds have not fully shifted to risk assets

At the same time as Arc's launch, the overall cryptocurrency market is not particularly strong.

The Federal Reserve just raised interest rates by 25bp, and BTC is still experiencing repeated fluctuations around $75,000, with discernible volatility in ETF fund flows.

Meanwhile, some mining companies and AI infrastructure-related firms have seen relatively independent increases. On September 16, during US stock trading, Cipher Digital rose over 10%, while companies such as TeraWulf, Core Scientific, Hut 8, and IREN also experienced gains.

This indicates that the current market is not simply "fully Risk-off."

Funds are searching for certainty across different narratives:

BTC waits for improvements in the macro environment, mining companies trade computational power and energy assets, stablecoins establish payment and settlement infrastructure, while RWA continues to seek on-chain landing points for traditional financial assets.

Global central banks have also not stopped impacting the cryptocurrency market

After the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike, market attention quickly turned to other central banks.

The Bank of England's meeting on September 17 became a new observation point. Due to rising oil prices and renewed inflationary pressures, the market has begun to raise expectations for further rate hikes in the UK, but there is still a significant difference between economists and market pricing.

Therefore, for the cryptocurrency market, it's not just about "whether the Federal Reserve raises interest rates" as a macro clue.

Global interest rates, energy prices, dollar liquidity, and ETF fund flows are all jointly determining the funding costs of risk assets.

Stablecoins are entering the next phase

In the past, the core use of stablecoins was as a "US dollar substitute" in exchanges.

The launch of Arc represents another direction:

Stablecoins are starting to directly enter payment, foreign exchange, RWA, lending, and institutional settlement infrastructures.

If this model ultimately gains sustained usage from banks, asset management institutions, and payment networks, then the focus of competition may no longer be on who issues more stablecoins, but on who can let these stablecoins circulate in real financial activities.

This is also a significant point of attention with the launch of Arc.

While the market is still trading BTC at $75,000 in the short term, the longer-term narrative around funding may gradually shift from "which coin to buy" to "who is building the next generation of on-chain financial infrastructure."

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