- Bybit and Circle extend USDC use across trading and payments
- Partnership links USDC to Bybit Earn, Card and Pay services
- Cooperation aligns stablecoin use with clearer regulation and oversight
Bybit and Circle have moved their long-running relationship into a new phase, with a strategic agreement that places USDC at the centre of Bybit’s trading, payment, and savings products. Announced from Dubai on 8 December 2025, the deal between Bybit and Circle links the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume with the New York Stock Exchange–listed issuer of USDC, Circle Internet Group, Inc. (NYSE: CRCL), in a coordinated effort to expand access to the world’s largest regulated stablecoin across key markets. In practical terms, the arrangement focuses on deeper USDC liquidity on Bybit’s spot and derivatives markets, simpler conversion between local currencies and digital assets, and tighter alignment between the two companies on compliance and transparency. The partners frame the move as a concrete step toward a stablecoin-based infrastructure where users treat tokenised dollars as a standard funding and settlement rail rather than a side product of speculative trading.
Bybit and Circle partnership reshapes access to USDC liquidity
The core of the Bybit and Circle partnership sits in trading, where both sides want USDC to function as a primary unit of account rather than a secondary quote asset. Bybit plans to channel more liquidity into USDC pairs on its spot and derivatives venues, with the goal of creating tighter spreads and deeper books for both retail clients and institutions that hedge, run arbitrage, or manage treasury flows on the exchange. The companies also intend to run joint campaigns that highlight fees, settlement speed, and operational simplicity when traders choose USDC as their base currency, which could shift behaviour away from volatile assets as collateral and settlement media. According to their announcement, the integration covers the full range of Bybit’s core markets, so users see the same stablecoin standard whether they trade perpetual contracts, futures, or simple spot pairs. This approach reflects the wider strategy of Bybit and Circle to turn regulated stablecoins into neutral infrastructure that underpins price discovery, collateral management, and cross-exchange transfers. The partnership between Bybit and Circle also extends into how money arrives on the platform and how it leaves again. By combining Circle’s fiat connectivity and network of banking and payment partners with Bybit’s presence in dozens of jurisdictions, the two groups aim to compress the friction that often slows deposits and withdrawals. A user who holds local currency in a bank account should face fewer steps when they move value into USDC on Bybit, use it for trading or payments, and then convert any remaining balance back into their domestic currency. Faster settlement, clearer fees, and fewer intermediaries matter for professional traders, but they also affect smaller account holders who want predictable costs when they move modest sums into digital assets for the first time. Bybit and Circle link these changes to a broader push for transparency, since every USDC token rests on reserves held in cash and short-term cash equivalents and remains redeemable one-for-one with the US dollar, subject to regular attestation by independent firms.
Trading, saving, and spending: USDC across the Bybit ecosystem
Beyond headline trading features, the agreement between Bybit and Circle reaches into Bybit’s wider product stack, where USDC becomes a consistent balance type for different use cases. In the savings segment, Bybit Earn will offer more ways to hold USDC in flexible or fixed-term products so users can park spare balances without shifting into higher risk tokens. The company positions these Earn products as an extension of spot balances rather than a separate speculative pool, which should appeal to users who treat the stablecoin as a digital cash position. Bybit Card will extend the same principle into spending, since cardholders will be able to fund their cards with USDC balances and receive cashback rewards that flow back into the same stablecoin wallet. That structure means a user could top up with a bank transfer, receive USDC on the exchange, allocate part of it to trading, earn some yield on idle funds via Earn, and still rely on the card for day-to-day purchases against the same underlying balance. Payments form the third pillar of this expansion, and they bring the story back to how Bybit and Circle present USDC in ordinary commerce. Bybit Pay will integrate USDC more deeply into merchant and peer-to-peer flows, so users can send tokenised dollars for invoices, remittances, or basic transfers without leaving the Bybit environment. Because USDC runs on public blockchains, settlement does not depend on local banking hours, which can help cross-border users who move money between time zones or regions with fragmented payment rails. For merchants, the combination of Bybit’s user base and Circle’s settlement infrastructure offers a simple path to accept stablecoin payments and convert them into local currency, while keeping chargeback risk and card scheme costs at a distance. In each of these segments, the companies anchor their narrative in regulation and reserve quality, stressing that USDC sits on top of segregated assets such as cash and short-term government instruments and that monthly reports from independent firms describe the composition of those reserves in detail.
Arc network testnet and the next layer of stablecoin-native finance
Another important strand in the story of Bybit and Circle is the early involvement of the exchange in Arc, Circle’s new layer-1 blockchain designed for stablecoin-native finance. The public testnet for Arc opened in October 2025, and Bybit joined in the first wave of more than one hundred companies that started to trial infrastructure and applications on the network. That early participation gives the exchange a front-row view of how a base layer optimised for stablecoins might change settlement patterns, fee structures, and risk management for both exchanges and payment firms. Instead of treating the blockchain as a generic execution layer, Arc focuses on predictable transaction costs, strong compliance hooks, and features that help financial institutions meet reporting and monitoring duties across jurisdictions. The Arc testnet phase gives Bybit and Circle room to test how cross-chain liquidity might work when USDC circulates on multiple networks at once. Liquidity providers can experiment with moving balances between chains, while developers explore how on-chain order routing or automated market making might change when most flow starts from a stable reference asset. Because more than one hundred companies joined the testnet during its initial months, the environment already reflects a mix of exchanges, wallets, custodians, and fintech firms rather than a closed laboratory. In that setting, the collaboration between Bybit and Circle offers a practical example of how a large exchange and a stablecoin issuer can align on both technology and policy goals while they still have time to adapt course before mainnet launch.
Regulation, licenses, and how Bybit and Circle address oversight
The regulatory angle forms a central part of the narrative around Bybit and Circle, since both sides emphasise oversight as a foundation rather than an afterthought. Bybit recently secured a full Virtual Asset Platform Operator License from the Securities and Commodities Authority of the United Arab Emirates, after an earlier in-principle approval earlier in 2025, and describes this licence as a major step in its expansion in the Middle East. The permit allows the exchange to offer regulated trading, brokerage, custody, and fiat conversion services under the SCA framework and marks the first authorisation of this scope for a global exchange in the country. Alongside this development, Bybit points to extended regulatory supervision in the European Economic Area, Turkey, and several other markets, where local requirements around anti–money laundering, client asset segregation, and disclosure shape how it structures its operations. Taken together, these moves support the message that the platform wants to line up with international standards as they emerge rather than operate in gaps between regimes. Circle brings its own regulatory posture to the partnership, since its USDC stablecoin runs through regulated entities and sits on top of reserves in cash and short-dated cash equivalents held with established financial institutions. Each USDC token is redeemable at par for a US dollar, and the company publishes monthly attestations from independent accounting firms that describe the size and composition of the reserve pool. That structure gives users, exchanges, and institutions a clear view of the backing behind the token, reducing uncertainty when they hold large balances or route significant settlement flows through the stablecoin. For Bybit and Circle, the alignment on transparent reserves and external reporting supports their plan to increase USDC’s role as a settlement asset for derivatives, spot markets, Earn products, card flows, and merchant payments on the exchange. The two leadership teams at Bybit and Circle underline these themes in their public statements. Ben Zhou, co-founder and chief executive of Bybit, describes the partnership as an important step in building an ecosystem that combines strong liquidity, clear rules, and a simple user experience across trading, savings, and payments. Jeremy Allaire, chairman and chief executive of Circle, points to the company’s focus on enterprise-grade infrastructure and stablecoins built for scale and notes that easier access to USDC, delivered through partners such as Bybit, should help more users and institutions treat tokenised dollars as a standard tool for internet-based finance. In effect, the public comments from Bybit and Circle frame the agreement as part of a larger shift that brings regulated digital dollars into ordinary financial workflows rather than keeping them on the edges of the system.
Conclusion
The new agreement between Bybit and Circle marks more than a marketing alignment, because it embeds USDC into every major part of the exchange’s activity, from spot and derivatives trading to savings products, cards, and payment flows. Bybit now connects its position as one of the world’s largest exchanges, backed by a full virtual asset licence from the UAE’s Securities and Commodities Authority and growing oversight across Europe and Turkey, with Circle’s role as issuer of a regulated stablecoin that holds cash and short-term assets as backing. Together, Bybit and Circle use this framework to promote a stablecoin that offers one-to-one redemption with the US dollar, regular external reporting, and broad multi-chain support, while they explore new infrastructure such as the Arc layer-1 network and test how cross-chain liquidity can support institutional strategies. As these pieces advance, the relationship between Bybit and Circle will serve as a reference point for how exchanges and stablecoin issuers can align business growth with regulatory expectations and with user demand for straightforward, stable digital dollars.
Disclaimer
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