Matthew Sigel
Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, Portfolio Manager of NODE ETF
Circle is unlikely to win corporate treasuries, because companies holding mostly T-bills gain nothing by handing those assets to Circle so it can collect their yield. That answers @drGhostinOO7, who argues corporate treasuries are waiting to be tokenized and Circle can take market share from SWIFT. x.comÂ
Circle faces real stablecoin competition as Open Standard launched its own stablecoin, Open USD, straight into USDC's lane. Circle stock fell 16.55% in 24 hours to $62, adding to last week's exit from five Russell Growth indexes. x.comÂ
Circle stands to benefit because stablecoins strip out the fees that eat into digital payments. Of 8,605 X subscriptions at $1.00, only $1,595 was paid out, with 30% App Store fees, Stripe card fees and opaque FX rounding (X charges 2 CAD for a $1 price) disappearing along the way. Stablecoins are the future, and banks are already trying to control them through Clarity Act lobbying. Issuers like Circle are preferred over individual networks like Ethereum, since USDC is blockchain-agnostic. x.com … Show more
Circle's long-term multi-bagger thesis, that USDC becomes a key part of next-generation payment rails, no longer looks on track. In just the past few days, 140 entities, including many major names, partnered with OUSD, and Robinhood announced a 7% yield program via USDG. Circle can still be a successful business, and its fall to the targeted ~$64 entry level looks justified by fundamentals, so the 'Circle is poised to dominate' case is crumbling. x.comÂ
RLUSD is positioned to become a main liquidity layer for XRP trading, as Tether did for Bitcoin. Planned Coinbase access and institutional backing add to Ripple's trust-bank OCC approval, BNY custody and RLUSD's Moody's A2 as adoption groundwork. If XRP becomes core settlement infrastructure, today's market-cap valuation models would look conservative; $100 is a number, not a ceiling. x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
Circle's USDC has a temporary EU go-to-market moat. The European Banking Authority gave USDC alone 'significant' stablecoin status among 45 e-money tokens under MiCA, adding a regulatory advantage to Circle's case as a sleeping giant. x.com x.comÂ
Circle investors significantly underestimate the risk that leading fintech players team up to launch their own stablecoin. Stripe alone holds an estimated $15-25 billion of float at any time from its transaction volume, equal to 20-25% of USDC's supply, without even actively growing it. x.comÂ
Circle's valuation is far too high to consider right now, given risks from crypto sentiment and margin pressure. That holds despite strong momentum: Q4 revenue rose 77% to $770M with a solid EPS beat, it has launched institutional payment platforms and expanded African partnerships, and potential US stablecoin legislation is a tailwind. x.comÂ
Circle is the crypto infrastructure play with real adoption, as the company behind the USDC stablecoin. x.comÂ
Coinbase remains a buy-the-dip crypto holding, but now ranks behind Circle. It has lagged amid prolonged CLARITY Act uncertainty, faces revenue risk from the ongoing USDC custody renegotiation with Circle, and miners shifting to AI temper the trading-volume outlook. Circle is the preferred stablecoin exposure because stablecoins are the natural payment rail for AI agents. Basket weights stay unchanged, with a lean toward adding to Circle as the highest-conviction name. x.comÂ