Binance Buys Into Circle's Future

Prediction Markets Eye $10T Future | CME Widens Its Altcoin Menu

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
September 23, 2026

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Good Morning.

Circle spent last week presenting itself as infrastructure with the Arc mainnet launch, then paid Binance with both fees and equity to keep USDC on the world's largest exchange, so the issuer's growth looks increasingly dependent on the distributors it pays.

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In Today's Email:

What Matters: Binance Buys Into Circle's Future 👀
Case Study: Prediction Markets Eye $10T Future 🔎
Governance & Features: CME Widens Its Altcoin Menu 📰

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WHAT MATTERS

Binance Buys Into Circle's Future

State of play: Binance put $100M into Circle through a private placement that was signed and closed together with a five-year USDC distribution deal, so the largest exchange now has an equity stake in the stablecoin issuer that pays it for distribution.

Binance bought 1.24M Class A shares at $80.84 each, as disclosed in Circle's 8-K filed Tuesday.
Circle will pay Binance a monthly incentive fee based on a percentage of the USDC held through its Modular Smart Contract Wallet.
The new deal replaces the 2024 and 2025 agreements, and either party can terminate early under specified conditions.
The shares carry a two-year lockup on selling or hedging, though Binance keeps its voting rights and the lockup can lift if it terminates the deal under certain circumstances.
The deal lands a week after Circle launched the Arc Layer 1 mainnet, where USDC pays gas and the validators include BlackRock, DTCC, and Visa.

Why it matters: Stablecoin economics depend on distribution, and Circle has now tied the biggest exchange to USDC with both fees and equity.

Our take: Circle's margins are already squeezed by Coinbase's revenue share, and adding another major distributor on a percentage fee shows the issuer keeps less of each dollar as USDC grows.

For builders and investors: Watch how much of Circle's reserve income goes to distributors, since that share, not USDC supply, decides whether the stock deserves its multiple.

CASE STUDY

Prediction Markets Eye $10T Future

State of play: Bernstein projects prediction market volume rising from an estimated $410B in 2026 to $10T by 2035, a forecast that holds only if the industry grows well beyond the sports betting that drives it today.

Financial assets should grow from 12% of volume in 2025 to 49% by 2035, while sports drops from 61% to 38%.
Bernstein expects new products to drive growth, including KPI markets on single corporate metrics like deliveries and perps expanding into commodities and single stocks.
Crypto's share of Kalshi volume rose from under 5% in January to about 20% in August, as Kalshi's share of industry volume grew to about 60% from 35% in 2025.
The model assumes prediction markets capture 0.5% of a $900T financial-asset pool by 2035, which works out to about $4.7T in annual volume.
Bernstein does not expect regulatory clarity for US sports markets before 2027-28, as courts remain split on federal derivatives oversight versus state gaming authority.

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INSIGHTS

SoFi Puts Card Settlement Onchain

State of play: SoFi is now the first bank to settle card transactions in its own stablecoin on Mastercard's network, moving a card program with more than $25B in expected annualized volume to SoFiUSD rather than a third-party token like USDC.

Merchants do not need to hold SoFiUSD or change their payment systems, and they get instant settlement with free cash withdrawals around the clock.
SoFi plans to offer the settlement option to other issuing banks through its Galileo platform and is in talks with large US merchants it has not named.
SoFiUSD is issued by OCC-regulated SoFi Bank, redeemable 1:1, backed mostly by cash, and live on Ethereum and Solana.
Mastercard's wider stablecoin settlement plans cover eight chains and tokens like USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD, with settlement available intraday, on weekends, and on holidays.
The two firms are exploring cross-border payments and remittances as the next uses for SoFiUSD on the network.

FEATURES & GOVERNANCE UPDATE

State of play: CME will list Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures on Oct. 19, pending regulatory review, adding to its altcoin lineup while it sues the CFTC to block the perpetual contracts that crypto-native traders prefer.

Both products come in standard and Micro sizes, covering 250 and 25 BCH, and 10,000 and 1,000 UNI.
The new contracts join CME's existing single-asset futures on BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, ADA, LINK, XLM, AVAX, and SUI.
CME's crypto futures and options averaged 279,800 contracts a day in H1 2026, or $8.3B in notional value, and this year's altcoin additions have generated more than $1B.
CME opened 24/7 crypto trading in June, and $50M traded over the opening weekend.
The lawsuit claims the CFTC's approval of Kalshi and Coinbase perps violates the Commodity Exchange Act, and CEO Terry Duffy has called these products a "disaster waiting to happen."

Other notable feature updates:

Arc’s mainnet launched.
Aero Lite launched on Arc.
Hyperliquid launches manual borrows.
Shadow Exchange teases V2 launch on Sonic.
Trueo migrates from Base to Ethereum mainnet.
Kamino launches Fixed Rates on Solana with Hastra.

QUICK BITES

SoFi begins stablecoin settlement on Mastercard network.
Canada's big six banks explore tokenized deposit system.
Binance takes $100M Circle stake alongside five-year USDC deal.
CFTC Chairman says markets must prepare for 'mass tokenization.'
Hashed anchors new digital asset private credit fund targeting $300M.
Solo GP Jed Breed raises $15M for his second early-stage crypto fund.
Bernstein sees annual prediction market volumes hitting $10 trillion by 2035.
CME adds Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures as crypto derivatives push grows.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

Gabriel Shapiro’s read on Tokenized Stock on AMMs.
Miles Jennings’s read on exchange rules for blockchain apps.
Yaroslav’s read on The Hidden Risk of Borrowing Against Tokenized Stocks.

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.