The rally in Circle (CRCL) stock could just be starting.
The call: With bitcoin (BTC-USD) prices coming back to life as the Treasury injects liquidity into the bond market, Circle shares have been rocking. The stock is up 23% in the past five days and trading at its highest level since mid-June, per Yahoo Finance AlphaSpace data.
Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani reiterated his Outperform rating on the stock and set a $140 price target in a note on Monday, implying at least 75% upside.
Chhugani outlined three main bullish points on Circle:
“We believe the recent momentum in crypto markets can be enduring, and we could be at the beginning of a new expansion cycle driven by macro regime change, real-world blockchain capital markets, stablecoin payments adoption (not just crypto) and some nascent signs of a stablecoin-led agentic economy.”
“We believe, this growth cycle is independent of the CLARITY Act passing in the September session. We believe, the SEC/CFTC intervention would accelerate if the Senate does not support CLARITY in the Sept. 15 vote. This is now acting as a pressure point for the Senate to pass the bill. In absence of CLARITY, the third-party stablecoin rewards continue as status-quo (direct yield on balances by Coinbase) and if CLARITY passes, stablecoin rewards are linked to user activity and not idle balances (indirect rewards). Either scenario is good for USDC.”
“Payments adoption of stablecoin continues on a steady growth path, as Circle expands its partnership with banks, fintech/ payment services providers and tech platforms. Industry data indicated real-world payments volume continues to grow ~20% month on month across business and consumer use-cases (as of June 2026). Circle has been on a strategic partnership spree and has integrated USDC with over 70% of the alliance partners of OUSD. As we have highlighted earlier, there are no exclusive alliances, what matters is liquidity and regulated market leadership – Circle remains dominant here.”
What else you need to know: Circle earlier this month dropped a second quarter that was good enough to send the stock higher — but not so clean that the bulls can declare total victory.
Revenue and reserve income came in at $701.3 million, up 6.6% year over year but shy of the $712.3 million Wall Street was expecting.
Circle minted $83 billion in USD Coin (USDC-USD), missing the $88.82 billion estimate, and the average USDC in circulation of $76.5 billion came in just under the $77.48 billion consensus. These data points tell you Circle is growing, but not quite at the pace the most aggressive stablecoin bulls had penciled in.
