Stablecoin supply on Arc, Circle's Layer-1 blockchain, climbed 33.51% over the past week to roughly $830.34 million, according to DefiLlama's Arc tracker. The increase stands out because the global stablecoin float contracted over the same window. Nearly all of Arc's stablecoin balance consists of Circle's USDC, meaning the chain is building up dollar inventory while the wider market sheds it.

Put simply, liquidity did not vanish this week — it moved.

What the Numbers Show

DefiLlama's October 23 snapshot places Arc's stablecoin capitalization near $830.34 million, up from approximately $622 million seven days earlier. Dollar-pegged tokens make up the bulk of that total, with smaller euro and sterling balances on top. USDC alone accounts for about $821 million on Arc — roughly 98.9% of the chain's stablecoin float — recording a weekly gain of nearly 34%.

Across all issuers and chains, DefiLlama's asset totals put the global stablecoin market near $304.89 billion, about $1.25 billion lower than a week earlier, a decline of 0.41%. Tether (USDT) remains the largest stablecoin at roughly $182.51 billion, or 59.86% of total supply, while USDC ranks second at approximately $72.10 billion. Set against that global total, the roughly $821 million of USDC on Arc works out to a bit more than 1% of USDC's worldwide circulation — a modest share of the issuer's float, on a chain Circle introduced only a few months earlier.

The Arc spike, then, is not a rising tide lifting every chain. It is one named network taking a larger share of a slightly smaller pool.

Arc's Role in the Story

Arc is Circle's open Layer-1, framed by the company as a settlement chain purpose-built for stablecoin finance. Circle's August 2025 introduction and the Arc Network site lay out the pitch: the chain is EVM-compatible and enterprise-facing, with fees meant to stay predictable in stablecoins — starting with USDC — rather than in a volatile gas token.

That context makes the week's chart easy to read. When a single issuer's dollar token dominates a chain's stablecoin balance, the weekly jump is mostly a story about where USDC is located. More USDC now sits on Arc than did seven days ago. And because that chain is one Circle itself launched and markets for stablecoin settlement, the company's public positioning and its token's on-chain distribution can now be checked against each other in the same weekly data.

Why a Shrinking Float Makes the Jump Louder

Global supply fell by about $1.25 billion, a soft week for the dollar-stablecoin market as a whole. Redemptions, rotation into other assets, or quiet inventory reductions can all trim the edges. Measured against that backdrop, Arc's 33.51% gain reads as a relative migration signal, not proof that broad demand for stablecoins suddenly returned.

For readers tracking where dollar liquidity prefers to rest, the key issue is concentration. A chain's stablecoin float is the dollar inventory actually sitting on that rail, so its distribution across networks is a public, running record of where that inventory rests. Arc remains mid-pack by size, holding hundreds of millions rather than the tens of billions parked on networks such as Ethereum or Tron. A one-week gain of a third of supply can rearrange local depth for swaps, collateral, and payments experiments on that rail. It does not rewrite the global USDT/USDC rank order.

Unknowns remain. DefiLlama reports circulating balances, but that alone does not explain the path of the Arc increase. Fresh USDC mint-and-bridge flows, CCTP-style transfers from other chains, or treasury redeploys within Circle's stack are all plausible mechanisms. The commercial intent behind the week's movements is not visible in public float tables.

What the tables do show is clear enough for a daily wire: Arc's float is up sharply, USDC dominates that balance, and the broader market is slightly smaller than it was a week ago. The peg promise remains the same question it always was — and this week's answer concerns which chain is holding more of the tokens that make that promise. For follow-through, DefiLlama's tracker is the public checkpoint: coming snapshots will show whether the near-$830 million level holds, and how the chain's smaller euro and sterling balances move alongside its dominant USDC float.

Source: Live Bitcoin News