Circle Layoffs: 5% of Staff Cut Despite $865M Q3 Revenue
Circle layoffs hit about 5% of staff in a quarter where revenue rose 17% to $865 million. Decrypt says the USDC issuer disclosed the cut in a footnote of its earnings release. Bitcoin.com News reports the same numbers.
What the Circle layoffs cost
Circle booked about $9.1 million of restructuring costs, mostly cash for notice periods and severance. A $5.7 million reversal of stock compensation from forfeited shares offset part of it, per Decrypt. In addition, the footnote says the cut aligns the organization with its operating model and priorities. Meanwhile, circle did not say how many people or which teams. Overall, decrypt adds that CEO Jeremy Allaire did not mention the cuts in his results comments.
The quarter behind the Circle layoffs
Net income from continuing operations rose 5% to $226 million. Adjusted EBITDA rose 85% to $317 million. However, the mix is weaker than the headline. Reserve income, the interest on USDC backing, fell 8% to $658 million as rates declined. Other revenue jumped to $207 million, of which $182 million came from the presale of ARC, the token of Circle’s Arc blockchain.
In other words, the core business shrank a little and a one-off sale filled the gap. Likewise, average USDC in circulation rose 8% to $73.3 billion, but quarter-end supply was flat at $73.9 billion. USDC’s share of the dollar stablecoin market slipped to 27%, per both reports.
Why miners should care
Stablecoins are how much of the bitcoin market gets its dollars. An issuer that earns less as rates fall is under pressure to cut costs. Also, that is a slow story, not a bitcoin price driver. Nothing here changes difficulty.
Miner math: what stablecoin trouble does and does not do to your S19
Here is the live maths on November 4. In addition, bitcoin is $80,315 and the network is 1020 EH/s, so hashprice is about $35.64 per petahash per day. Meanwhile, that is what one PH/s of hashing earns before power.
| Machine | 5c/kWh | 8c/kWh | 12c/kWh | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antminer S19 (95 TH/s, 3250 W) | -$0.51 | -$2.85 | -$5.97 | 4.3c |
| Antminer S19k Pro (115 TH/s, 2645 W) | $0.92 | -$0.98 | -$3.52 | 6.5c |
| Antminer S19 XP (141 TH/s, 3010 W) | $1.41 | -$0.75 | -$3.64 | 7.0c |
| Antminer S21 Pro (234 TH/s, 3510 W) | $4.13 | $1.60 | -$1.77 | 9.9c |
Numbers are profit per day after electricity, at the three power prices shown. Break-even is the most you can pay per kilowatt-hour before the machine loses money. Specs are the manufacturer ratings; network data comes from mempool.space. Try your own power price in our free bitcoin mining profit calculator. See what these machines really sold for in our used ASIC miner price index. Want to run the same numbers on a machine you can buy today? See our used ASIC miners, or buy several at once through bulk lots.
If tighter stablecoin liquidity shaves 2% off bitcoin: the break-even power price on an S19k Pro falls from 6.5 to 6.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. At 8 cents, daily profit goes from -$0.98 to -$1.06.
The honest read: this is a business story about falling rates. Your margin depends on price, hashrate and power. Use the table above with your own rate. If the numbers fail, we buy used miners. If they pass, see miners in stock or our mining economics guides.
-Nick
ING Mining
This is general information, not financial advice. Crypto is volatile, and exchanges can fail. Please do your own research.
How this story was made: drafted with the help of AI tools from public sources, then edited by Nick Squires. See our editorial policy. Spot an error? Email ns@ingmining.com.