Arc facilitates $150M in USDC borrowing against cirBTC as institutional demand surges

More than $150 million in USDC has been borrowed against cirBTC on Arc, Circle’s EVM-compatible Layer-1 blockchain. The milestone arrived remarkably fast, with borrowing activity exploding from roughly $1.37 million at launch to over $90 million within just a few days. The mechanism is straightforward in concept, even if the plumbing underneath is complex: institutions deposit Bitcoin, mint cirBTC (a token backed 1:1 by actual BTC held in segregated custody), and then borrow USDC against that cirBTC collateral. They get liquidity without selling their Bitcoin. How the lending infrastructure works Arc launched its mainnet on September 21, 2026, with Morpho Blue serving as the core lending infrastructure. Within hours of going live, deposits into Morpho’s vaults surpassed $150 million. The collateral itself, cirBTC, first appeared on Ethereum back in June 2026 before making the jump to Arc’s mainnet on launch day. Each cirBTC token is backed by one Bitcoin sitting in segregated custody, with Chainlink’s Proof of Reserves providing continuous verification that the backing is real. Circle has branded this framework Digital Asset-Backed Borrowing, or DABB, and restricted access to eligi...