Eligible Circle Mint institutions are now able to deposit Bitcoin, convert it into wrapped cirBTC collateral, and borrow USDC through a Morpho lending market within a single unified workflow.
On Sept. 21, Circle launched the service across Arc and Ethereum, decreasing the number of platforms treasury teams need to use to secure dollar liquidity without liquidating their Bitcoin holdings.
The offering is restricted to eligible institutions, is unavailable to New York clients, and depends on specific jurisdiction and eligibility requirements. The setup utilizes Circle Mint as the account interface, cirBTC as Circle’s tokenized claim backed by native Bitcoin, and Morpho to provide the third-party lending market.
Through Circle’s Digital Asset-Backed Borrowing service, users deposit native BTC, mint cirBTC, and utilize a customer-controlled wallet to supply that token as collateral. The borrowed USDC is then delivered directly to the user’s Circle Mint balance.
While Circle orchestrates the user experience, the chosen market dictates borrowing fees, collateral caps, liquidation limits, available liquidity, and overall availability. According to Morpho’s documentation, every individual market features its own distinct pairing of loan asset, collateral, oracle, interest-rate model, and liquidation loan-to-value threshold.
For treasury teams, this simplified interface does not eliminate the requirement to track collateral values, market utilization, and borrowing expenses. Because cirBTC is held within the lending market, positions can face liquidation even though the original Bitcoin remains unsold.
A data snapshot from Sept. 21 for the Arc marketâwhich handles USDC loans backed by cirBTCâindicated an 86% liquidation loan-to-value limit. The metrics revealed $14.13 million in active borrows, $162.85 million in accessible liquidity, a total market size of $176.99 million, and a 7.98% utilization rate, with the activity log recording at least one borrow that same day.
Although these statistics demonstrate that the Arc market was functional, they represent a single point in time and do not extend to Ethereum.
Data from Circle’s reserve dashboard on Sept. 20 showed 948.75081803 cirBTC in circulation backed by 951.25857454 BTC in reserves. Roughly 397 cirBTC resided on Arc, while approximately 552 cirBTC was located on Ethereum.
Arc functions as Circle’s layer-1 network and relies on a permissioned validator set, providing another key factor for institutions weighing their options among the supported networks.
Although this rollout streamlines the process of moving from held Bitcoin to USDC, it does not convert variable decentralized finance credit into a fixed loan from Circle. The extent to which this offering generates sustained demand for cirBTC will ultimately rely on ongoing borrowing volume and evolving market conditions beyond the initial launch metrics.
