Key highlights:

  • Heath Tarbert has offloaded CRCL shares multiple times since June 2025
  • Data revealed that there have been at least 193 stock sales and no purchases in the past six months
  • Circle stock has crashed by 75% from its IPO peak of $299

A new SEC filing showed that Circle President Heath Tarbert has been selling shares since June 2025. This comes as the stock continues to fall amid new competition and insider trading activity.

 

Circle stock faces pressure as insider selling continues

The disclosure showed that Tarbert sold company shares 10 times since June 2025. The transactions included both stock sales and option exercises. He cut his holdings by $30.77 million but still owns 503,000 shares of the stock. Records also show there were no open-market purchases from Tarbert during this period

Source: SEC

A report from Quiver Quantitative in June also highlighted that insiders have made 154 sales of CRCL shares from January to June 2025. Not a single insider purchased in that time.

A shareholder, Patrick Sean Neville, was the top seller. He sold more than 1.25 million shares, which were worth $106.5 million at the time. Chief Product and Technology Officer Nikhil Chandhok also sold $41.7 million worth of stock. Fast forward to July, the number of sales has increased to 193.

Source: Quiver Quantitative

The insider activity comes as Circle stock continues its freefall after its IPO run. The firm priced its initial public offering at $31 per share in June 2025. 

Shares started trading at $69 on the first day and then pumped to about $299 later that month. Today, CRCL is down over 75% from that peak.

Competition and analyst concerns weigh on shares

There have been many factors that have contributed to the fall. Earlier in the month, Visa shared plans to launch a stablecoin platform for Open Standard's OUSD, which is a rival to Circle's USDC stablecoin. 

The platform would support payments and treasury operations for banks and merchants through Visa's global network. There were concerns raised that the competition could affect Circle's growth.

Now, this has put USDC in focus, whose growth has stalled in the past months. Circle generates much of its revenue from reserves backing its stablecoin. So, the new competition from OpenUSD raised eyebrows from experts.

Notably, Mizuho Securities downgraded CRCL shares to an "underperform" rating from "neutral” as it continues to struggle.

Meanwhile, not everyone is bearish. Cathie Wood's Ark Invest has been adding shares during the recent sell-off. The firm has made purchases of at least $18 million over the past 2 weeks.

In another positive development for the company,  the OCC granted final approval for a national trust bank charter. The approval puts the company in a good position in the finance space. This could also help attract institutional clients over time. 

The business itself saw good revenue. During the first quarter of 2026, the company reported revenue of $694 million, up 20% from a year earlier.