Key Takeaways:
- USDC on Kraken trading volume increased over 30% in a 1-year time period.
- Kraken has traded nearly 1 billion EURC since it listed.
- DeFi Earn by Kraken has over $350 Million worth of USDC deposits.
Circle says its stablecoin partnership with Kraken is producing measurable growth across trading, funding and onchain products.
Stablecoins are moving deeper into the products customers already use.
Kraken partnered with Circle to expand USDC and EURC utility across funding, trading, wallet infrastructure, and onchain access.
The results:
→ 30% USDC AUC growth on Kraken since its September 2025 partnership with Circle
→ Nearly 1B EURC traded on Kraken since listing
→ 350M USDC deposited to Kraken’s DeFi Earn vaults post launchFor Kraken, building with USDC and EURC helped reduce fragmentation across core platform flows and give customers more direct access to dollar- and euro-denominated stablecoin utility.
https://t.co/Qxaxgtoz6S
— Circle (@circle) October 28, 2026
The companies’ partnership has since widened in September 2025, and USDC volume on Kraken has risen by over 30% while EURC has grown into a large trading market in euros.
Kraken Pushes USDC Beyond Spot Trading
In 2020, Kraken already had ties with USDC, but in 2025, it will extend the token into the exchange’s infrastructure through a partnership with Circle.
Rather than just using USDC as a trading pair, Kraken translated its funding, earn offerings, wallet infrastructure and onchain applications to this pair. Circle aimed to provide fewer conversion steps and more direct access for users to convert to the $ in order to arbitrate.
The strategy seems like it’s starting to succeed. According to Circle, USDC on Kraken has risen by over 30% since September of 2025 to September of 2026. As of October 26, Circle says that it has approximately $71 billion worth of USDC in circulation, and approximately $71.2 billion worth of reserve denominated in USDC.
Read More: Circle Brings USDC and EURC Into SAP Workflows Powering 84% of Global Commerce
DeFi Earn Pulls in $350M of USDC
The most obvious one is arguably the DeFi Earn product of Kraken. Eligible assets deposited by customers can be converted into USDC, moved through an embedded wallet and allocated into Veda vaults on Ink, Kraken-supported Ethereum Layer 2 infrastructure built on the Optimism stack.
They are able to connect with third-party lending protocols such as Aave, while risk managers are independent thus managing liquidity and allocations. In the months after the launch, over $350 million worth of USDC was deposited into Circle’s DeFi Earn vaults.
EURC Trading Approaches 1 Billion on Kraken
Kraken also launched its € stablecoin launch with the addition of EURC in September 2025. Under the MiCA framework in Europe, the token will offer them an alternative trading option that’s denominated in euros, as well as account funding and collateral.
According to Circle, EURC’s on-chain volume has increased from almost 4 million tokens in October 2025 to over 75 million tokens by September 2026. In some months, over 100 million EURC worth of trading has been recorded; in total, trading since the listing has been close to 1 billion EURC.
Circle and Kraken Turn Stablecoins Into Core Infrastructure
The partnership has announced a bigger trend towards the adoption of stablecoins among exchanges. Settlement and liquidity infrastructure have developed much more quickly for USDC and EURC than they have for the dollars and euros that are traded, settled, and created.
For Kraken, the double token approach from a single issuer will minimize the need to coordinate between multiple stablecoin issuers regarding funding, trading and onchain processes. According to Circle, this has helped cut down on fragmentations and foster access to liquidity in dollars and euros.
It is also a part of USDC’s activity that is being scaled in crypto markets. Throughout the first half of 2026, Circle crossed USDC onchain transaction volume of over $36 trillion, highlighting how stablecoins are now becoming a mainstay of exchange and settlement infrastructure.
Read More: Kraken Launches xStocks Vaults With Up to 2% Yield on Tokenized Stocks and ETFs Now
