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

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes or less, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors, equities fall ahead of today’s CPI; BTC at $80.7k
• Circle stock jumps 15% after Q1 earnings beat, $222M Arc raise
• STRC regains par, moves enough for 1,400 BTC in purchases
• Kraken parent Payward raises fresh capital at $20B valuation
• Hyperliquid’s first ETF (THYP) goes live for trading today

💰 Circle Beats Q1 and Raises $222M for Arc

Circle reported Q1 2026 earnings Monday alongside a major surprise disclosure: the stablecoin issuer raised $222 million in a presale of its Arc blockchain token.

The Arc raise was done at a $3 billion fully diluted valuation, backed by a who’s who of institutional finance: a16z crypto led at $75 million, and BlackRock, Apollo, Intercontinental Exchange, ARK Invest, Haun Ventures, Standard Chartered Ventures, and several others participated. Circle simultaneously published the Arc whitepaper and launched Circle Agent Stack, a full suite of autonomous AI agent payment tools built on Arc’s infrastructure.

Arc is a public Layer-1 blockchain built specifically for institutional finance, with USDC as native gas token, sub-second finality, opt-in privacy, EVM compatible. The testnet processed 166 million transactions at half-second finality with near-perfect uptime through February. And Arc will be quantum-resistant at mainnet launch.

But while the market liked the Arc news, it loved Circle’s earnings. It was a major beat, featuring:

• $694M total revenue and reserve income (+20% YoY)
• $77.0B USDC in circulation (+28% YoY)
• $21.5T in USDC onchain transaction volume (+263% YoY)

CEO Jeremy Allaire commented “We’re entering the operating system business.” Circle stock jumped 16% on the day.

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

Michael Saylor spent Monday walking back the market’s reading of his Q1 earnings call comment, and in doing so, gave the most detailed explanation of Strategy’s capital structure to date.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Saylor called the concern over Bitcoin sales “a big nothing burger from an economic point of view.” His clarification: if Strategy were to sell enough Bitcoin to fund all of its dividends for an entire year, it would simultaneously be buying 20 Bitcoin for every one it sold. “So it’s no different than buying 20 Bitcoin and selling no Bitcoin,” he said. He went on to share more reasoning: “If the market thought we would never sell it, the credit rating agencies would say, ‘Well, then I guess it’s not an asset.’”

The actual mechanics, per Saylor: any Bitcoin sale would be a tax loss harvesting maneuver. Strategy recorded a $12.54 billion unrealized loss in Q1 as Bitcoin fell 23% from $87,500 to $67,700. Under FASB’s mark-to-market rules, that loss flowed directly through the income statement, and generated a $2.2 billion deferred tax asset. Selling a small amount of Bitcoin now would crystalize those capital losses, carry them back against prior gains, and generate a real tax benefit.

Strategy did exactly this in December 2022: sold 704 BTC at $16,776, immediately repurchased 810 BTC two days later, and booked the tax benefit. The 2026 version would be larger in dollar terms but identical in structure.

Notably, Strategy also disclosed Monday it resumed buying, picking up 535 BTC for $43 million at an average of $80,340 last week. And with STRC back at its $100 par value, the market is expecting a significantly bigger buy coming this week…

💰 Kraken Is Raising Again at a $20B Valuation

Payward, Kraken’s parent company, is raising new capital at a $20 billion valuation as it accelerates its acquisition and infrastructure buildout ahead of a planned IPO.

The round comes after a stretch of aggressive M&A which included:

• the $1.5 billion NinjaTrader acquisition in 2025 gave it US retail futures
• the $550 million Bitnomial deal in April gave it the full CFTC derivatives stack, and
• the $600 million Reap acquisition this week added stablecoin payment infrastructure across Southeast Asia.

Payward has also filed for an OCC national trust company charter, applied to become a Federal Reserve member bank through Kraken Financial, and confidentially filed an S-1 with the SEC.

Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said at Consensus Miami last week that the exchange is “80% ready” to go public, though the IPO remains contingent on market conditions. The company generated $2.2 billion in adjusted revenue in 2025, a 33% increase, with asset-based services (custody, yield, financing) outpacing trading commissions for the first time.

📈 Bitcoin Flashes Most Bullish Technical Signal of 2026

Bitcoin flashed a golden cross on Monday, a technical signal that occurs when the 50-day simple moving average crosses above its 200-day simple moving average.

It’s the first golden cross since June 2025, and the setup looks more like the 2023 and 2024 versions than the one that preceded the all-time high. The October 2023 cross happened around $28-30K and preceded a 157% rally. The May 2024 cross formed around $60K and preceded a run to $100K. Both occurred well off major bottoms with the trend recovering, exactly the structure in place today, with BTC climbing from its February low near $60K to $81K.

As for the golden bull case from here: the Clarity Act passing by July 4th, Saylor’s STRC moving to semi-monthly in July, progress on the Quantum front and rotation from gold / equities. If that string of events occurs, the 2026 golden cross may put the 2023 version to shame…

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

OpenAI launched Daybreak Monday, a dedicated AI platform for cyber defense built on GPT-5.5 and Codex that can scan codebases, identify vulnerabilities, validate patches, and move from discovery to remediation in hours rather than weeks.

Daybreak rolls out through OpenAI’s Trusted Access for Cyber program, with vetted teams getting access to GPT-5.5-Cyber, a version with fewer restrictions on security-sensitive tasks including binary reverse engineering, malware analysis, and proof-of-concept generation. The launch puts OpenAI in direct competition with Anthropic’s Mythos, which found nearly 300 vulnerabilities in Firefox alone and tens of thousands across major software systems.

And perhaps this is exactly what crypto needs. April 2026 was DeFi’s worst month in over a year, with $770 million lost across 30+ incidents, and every major exploit tracing back to a single privileged admin key that passed standard audits without being flagged. Lazarus Group, responsible for 76% of 2026 DeFi losses per Chainalysis, is believed to run automated tooling that scans for exactly these configurations faster than human reviewers can catch them.

Continuous AI-powered smart contract auditing, running against every deployment rather than once before launch, is the missing layer that Daybreak is positioned to provide. Let’s equip the white hats before the black hats do any more damage…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red ahead of today’s CPI print; BTC -0.5% at $80.7k; ETH -2% at $2,285; SOL even at $95; HYPE -2% at $40.85
• B (+34%), STABLE (+11%) and NIGHT (+5%) led top movers
• Oil rebounded another 3% at $99; Gold +1% at $4,696
• Stock futures are red with the Nasdaq down 0.8%
• MoonPay acquired Dawn Labs on Monday and launched Dawn CLI as an AI trading tool that lets users describe a strategy in plain English and have it automatically researched, coded, backtested, and executed; launching first on Polymarket with other venues to follow
• Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade went live on Monday, with launch coming as soon as Q3 2026 if all goes well; Alpenglow reduces transaction finality from 12.8 seconds to 100-150 milliseconds and frees ~75% of current block space consumed by on-chain validator votes
• Grayscale filed for the first-ever spot ETF for a privacy coin, converting its Zcash Trust into a spot ETF
• Arthur Hayes argued that BTC bottomed at $60k and that new highs are inevitable in his latest blog

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

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 first ETF via 21Shares launches today with ticker THYP
• Pavel Durov introduced a new toolchain for smart contracts on TON, replacing its existing fragmented tooling and will be AI-ready
• Aptos will launch an encrypted mempool to prevent censorship and frontrunning

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

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