Corporate Development & Ventures – Senior Director

Circle still tells users to buy Noble USDC on Coinbase after cutoff date passes. Coinbase's announced Aug. 17 cutoff for USDC deposits and withdrawals on Noble had passed, but Circle's public Noble guide was still telling users to use Coinbase and select Noble as the network as of press time Aug. 18. Coinbase's July 15 notice did not specify a clock time or timezone for the cutoff. It warned users not to send USDC to Coinbase's Noble deposit addresses after Aug. 17 because those funds may not be recoverable. The warning identifies a transfer risk, not evidence that users have already lost funds. Coinbase named Ethereum, Base, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon as other supported USDC networks. Its general receiving guidance tells customers to confirm that the exchange supports the selected network, warning that assets sent on an unsupported network can be lost and cannot be retrieved. Noble USDC remains live The cutoff applies to Coinbase's custodial route, not to Noble-native USDC itself. Noble has served as Circle's native issuance chain for USDC in the Cosmos ecosystem since the asset's 2023 rollout. Circle's current Noble product page describes access through Circle Mint for eligible businesses and lists compatible wallets including Cosmostation, Keplr and Leap. Those options are not direct equivalents to Coinbase's custodial rail. Cross-chain access also carries a migration constraint. Noble remains on legacy CCTP V1 while Circle phases that version out over 10 months beginning in July 2026. Circle said it is working with Noble and Cosmos teams on an intermediate routing solution and that pending redemptions will remain accessible during the phase-out. The migration notice did not specify the planned route's design or launch date. A third-party usdc.cool snapshot captured at about 1:47 a.m. UTC on Aug. 18 showed $114.24 million of USDC issued on Noble, $93.05 million bridged out and about $21.19 million circulating on the network. That is a Noble-specific measurement. CryptoSlate's USDC page showed roughly $71.9 billion in market-wide USDC circulating supply across blockchains at the time. Circle's guide separately says that more than $450 million of USDC was in circulation on Noble as of March 2025. That older figure and the usdc.cool snapshot come from different dates and potentially different circulation scopes, so they do not establish a decline. Circle's dated figure also does not represent current Noble exposure or current Coinbase network support.

Circle has launched cirBTC, positioning it as "neutral" wrapped Bitcoin infrastructure without ties to exchanges or lending protocols, in contrast to rivals WBTC and Coinbase's cbBTC. However, adoption remains minimal. Circle's latest reserve data from 28 July showed just 40 cirBTC in circulation, backed by 42 BTC. By comparison, WBTC had 116,499 tokens outstanding against 116,514 BTC on 29 July, whilst Coinbase reported 95,492 cbBTC backed by 95,503 BTC as of 31 July. Circle emphasises transparency through Chainlink Proof of Reserve monitoring and public disclosure of Bitcoin addresses. The token launched on Ethereum on 8 June, with multichain support planned. DeFi integration will prove critical. Aave Labs has proposed adding cirBTC as collateral, though a June risk assessment cited limited liquidity concerns. Meanwhile, cbBTC had already seen 18,917 tokens supplied to Aave V3 Core by late June.

Base emerges as a dominant force in stablecoin card payments. Coinbase's Layer 2 network now handles roughly 19% of all tracked crypto card spending as Visa's stablecoin settlement pilot hits a $7B annualized run rate 2 hours ago Via techcrunch.com Sponsored: CryptoSlots - Cryptoslots Play now! The idea of paying for your morning coffee with stablecoins used to sound like a crypto fever dream. Now it's a $759 million-per-month business, and Coinbase's Base network is quietly becoming the infrastructure layer that makes it work. As of July 2026, Base accounts for approximately 19% of all tracked crypto card spending volume, making it one of the largest blockchain networks powering stablecoin-linked payment cards. That puts it in a dead heat with Solana, also at 19%, while Optimism leads the pack at 29%. The numbers behind the growth. Monthly on-chain transaction volumes for crypto card programs reached around $759 million in July 2026, with nearly 9 million individual purchases recorded. Annualized, that puts the stablecoin card market in the neighborhood of $18 billion. Visa has been the single most important accelerator of this trend. On April 29, 2026, the payments giant expanded its stablecoin settlement pilot to include Base, bringing the total number of supported blockchains to nine. After that expansion, the pilot reached a $7 billion annualized run rate. Visa's stablecoin-linked card programs now exceed 130 across more than 50 countries. The dominant assets flowing through these programs are USDC and USDT, the two largest dollar-backed stablecoins by market cap. Why Base keeps winning card issuers. Base's appeal to card program issuers comes down to three things: low transaction fees, fast finality, and native USDC support from Circle. Transaction fees on Base typically run a fraction of a cent, which matters enormously when you're processing millions of small-ticket purchases per month. Base's architecture as an Ethereum Layer 2, using optimistic rollup technology, delivers transaction confirmations quickly enough to meet the expectations of traditional payment rails. Circle, the issuer of USDC, has deep integration with Base, which isn't surprising given that Coinbase is both a Circle investor and the operator of Base. That tight relationship means USDC minting, redemption, and settlement on Base are essentially first-class operations. Card issuers building on Base don't have to worry about liquidity gaps or bridging headaches when their users spend USDC at checkout. The competitive landscape. Base isn't operating in a vacuum. Optimism currently handles a larger share of crypto card spend at 29%, and Solana matches Base's 19% share while offering its own advantages in speed and developer ecosystem. Visa's decision to support nine blockchains rather than picking a single winner suggests the payments giant is hedging its bets. That multi-chain approach gives card issuers flexibility but also means no single network has a monopoly on Visa's stablecoin volume. Mastercard has been making its own moves in the stablecoin space, adding another dimension to the competitive picture. Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how Crypto Briefing create and review content, see its Editorial Policy.