The USDC Treasury minted 130,724,040 USDC, valued at approximately $130.76 million, in a single transaction tracked by on-chain monitoring service Whale Alert. The mint is one piece of a much larger wave of issuance: Circle executed roughly $5 billion in gross USDC minting during the week ending August 26, 2026.
What is actually happening when USDC gets minted
An institution deposits dollars into a Circle reserve account, Circle verifies the funds, and new USDC tokens are created on-chain in an equivalent amount. Circle backs every USDC token with reserves held predominantly in short-duration US Treasuries and cash equivalents. Total reserves currently sit at around $74 billion, comfortably covering the circulating supply of just over $73 billion.
Solana has emerged as the primary destination for new supply. Multiple individual minting events of $250 million each occurred on the network during the same week, combining to roughly $1.25 billion minted on Solana alone.
Why institutions keep reaching for on-chain dollars
