BlockBeats news: On March 11, brokerage Bernstein stated that the stock of stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) still has upside potential, assigning a "Outperform" rating and a $190 price target, representing approximately 60% upside from the current level of around $120. The stock had previously risen over 100% in the weeks following its better-than-expected earnings report.
Analyst Gautam Chhugani noted that stablecoin growth is gradually decoupling from the cryptocurrency market cycle. Although Bitcoin and the broader crypto market remain below their historical highs, the supply of USD Coin has rebounded to nearly $78 billion, its historical peak, while the total market capitalization of dollar-denominated stablecoins remains around $270 billion.
The report states that stablecoin trading activity is growing significantly: adjusted stablecoin trading volume increased by over 90% year-over-year, with faster transaction speeds indicating that its use cases are gradually expanding beyond crypto trading into payments.
On the payment side, stablecoins are increasingly being integrated into traditional card networks. Visa now supports over 130 stablecoin-linked debit cards across 50 countries, with an annualized settlement volume of approximately $4.6 billion. Additionally, Circle is expanding its cross-border settlement infrastructure, the Circle Payments Network, which currently connects around 55 institutions and processes an annualized transaction volume of approximately $5.7 billion.
Bernstein also noted that another potential growth theme in the future is "Agentic Finance." As autonomous software agents conduct transactions across the internet, stablecoins could become the natural settlement layer for micropayments between machines, such as payments for API calls or automated services. To support this direction, Circle is developing the high-throughput payment blockchain, Arc.