Circle kept roughly 7 cents of net profit on every dollar of revenue in the first half of 2026, according to figures the stablecoin issuer published Friday in a blog post by Chief Commercial Officer Kash Razzaghi. The company brought in about $1.4 billion over the period, while $819 million went out the door in distribution and transaction costs.

The disclosure lands in the middle of a fight over who keeps the interest earned on the reserves backing dollar-pegged tokens. Circle's largest distribution partner, Coinbase, is also a backer of Open USD — a rival network, unveiled in June, that Stripe and BlackRock also support.

Open USD's pitch is simple. Let businesses mint and redeem stablecoins without fees, then pass reserve income back to participants after a management fee. Its OUSD token is already live. Paxos runs a similar play through the Global Dollar Network, which shares reserve income with its participants too.

Circle's post never names Open USD directly. It didn't need to.

What does Circle actually spend the money on?

The remaining $473 million of first-half revenue, Circle said, covered compliance, liquidity and product development. About $214 million of that was stock-based compensation and related costs.

Razzaghi's argument is that reserve income isn't free money sitting in a vault, and that rivals promising bigger payouts are simply declining to name the bills that come with issuing a stablecoin.

"The costs of redemption, compliance, and resilience don't disappear just because the issuer declined to pay them," Razzaghi wrote.

Circle also flagged what it frames as a customer-facing difference. Standard USDC redemptions remain free and, in Circle's words, "typically settle in up to two business days." Qualifying platform customers and payment flows through the Circle Payments Network can now access near-real-time redemptions at no cost, the company said.

That's the operational heart of the dispute. Passing reserve income to partners sounds attractive until an issuer has to fund redemptions at scale, run compliance programs and hold liquidity buffers against surges. Circle is essentially arguing those obligations are the price of the ticket, not an optional extra.

Where does this leave Coinbase?

Coinbase sits in an awkward chair. It is Circle's largest USDC partner and takes a meaningful share of that $819 million in distribution costs. At the same time, it is backing a network built on a model that would hand more reserve income to businesses like itself.

There's no public sign the Coinbase-Circle relationship is fraying. But the incentives now point in two directions. If Open USD's OUSD gains traction among payment companies and exchanges, Circle's distribution economics face pressure at exactly the moment it is trying to lock in partners.

Circle has been working on that front. In September, Binance bought a $100 million stake in the firm under a five-year deal that includes a fee tied to USDC held through Circle's wallet service. That followed years of on-and-off competition between the two companies over stablecoin listings.

The Binance deal gives Circle a deep-pocketed distribution partner with its own reasons to see USDC succeed — and a five-year runway to make that alignment stick before the question comes up again.

What changes for the stablecoin market?

For the wider market, Circle's disclosure does something rare: it puts hard numbers on the split between issuer profit and partner payouts in a business often described only in aggregate terms. A 7-cent net margin on revenue, after paying partners more than half the top line, reframes what "the issuer keeps the yield" actually means in practice.

It also sets a benchmark rivals now have to answer. Open USD and the Global Dollar Network promise richer reserve-income passes. Circle is betting that once redemption, compliance and liquidity costs are priced honestly, its 7 cents look less like fat and more like the going rate for running the infrastructure.

The market will test that bet as OUSD adoption data accumulates over the coming quarters, and as Circle's five-year Binance arrangement matures alongside it.