Stablecoin issuer Circle’s shares jumped another 15% Monday, extending gains to roughly 60% since last week’s fourth-quarter earnings release, as investors poured into stablecoin-linked equities while broader crypto markets held firm.
“Demand for stablecoins as well as the medium-to-long-term positive forecasts have made CRCL and stablecoin projects in general the real flavour of the month,” Sean Dawson, head of research at Derive, told Decrypt.
“Regulatory momentum (Genius Act) as well as the obvious product market fit have made CRCL a relatively stable and reliable place to invest as the digital asset market has languished over the last several months,” he said.
At the same time, some analysts say the rally points to a shift in how investors view Circle, not as a token proxy, but as a payments infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence.
“We’ve started a new era in the AI story,” Pav Hundal, lead analyst at Australian crypto exchange Swyftx, told Decrypt. “Investors are starting to pick winners and losers, and, rightly or wrongly, Circle is seen as a big winner in the AI narrative.”
“USDC isn’t a crypto bet anymore, it's a payments infrastructure and agentics bet,” he added.
He described a future where AI agents transact autonomously on behalf of users and businesses, “naturally route around high fees” and select the “cheapest settlement rails available,” with stablecoins already “positioned for that role.”
On an earnings call last week, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire tied the company’s future to artificial intelligence, saying it will “drive the greatest acceleration of economic activity we've ever seen in human history.”
