Circle is beleaguered on all sides. Not only is the $78 billion stablecoin issuer under pressure from archrival Tether, the world’s leading stablecoin issuer, which has made several overtures to challenge Circle on its US home market, but fintech firms and Wall Street giants are increasingly announcing initiatives to launch fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies of their own. “We believe Circle is a long-term category winner,” Bernstein analysts wrote in a report on Tuesday. “Its regulatory edge, strategic partnerships, liquidity head-start and technology-stack create a competitive moat that we believe is difficult for rivals to replicate.”
The bullish forecast comes as Circle’s stock has more than doubled over the last year. Now, analysts at Bernstein are forecasting another 71% rally to $190 from its current price of $111. The total market for stablecoins has more than doubled, from $131 billion in January 2024 to over $314 billion today, according to DefiLlama data. Circle has been a major winner of that growth.
In 2025, Circle recorded over $2.7 billion in revenue, a 64% increase over 2024, according to the latest filings. The rise was driven primarily by its core business of earning revenue from its reserve assets, of which more than 84% are government-backed obligations, according to its latest transparency report. Transaction revenue, however, remains the fastest-growing business segment for Circle, rising 112% year-over-year. The company chalked this growth up to the adoption of USDC among buzzy applications, such as prediction markets.
Circle’s Nanopayments are Circle’s attempt to accommodate such a future. The infrastructure enables tiny, high-frequency transactions among different AI agents in so-called machine-to-machine marketplaces. The infrastructure is built atop a protocol called x402, developed by Coinbase, one of Circle’s key partners. To be sure, Circle isn’t alone in taking advantage of the clear stablecoin regulations in the US.
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