Circle shares fell 17% on the day the Open Standard alliance was unveiled, a sell-off many in the market read as a sign that a coalition-backed stablecoin effort could pressure the current structure led by Circle and Tether. Artemis, in a new research note, takes the other side of that trade and says the drop reflects a flawed view of what Circle is building.
Its argument is that investors are still valuing Circle mainly as a stablecoin issuer, even as the company works toward what Artemis describes as a full-stack money platform for the internet. In that view, the latest decline says more about market positioning than about a change in long-term fundamentals.
Why the market reacted so sharply
The Open Standard alliance launched with backing from more than 140 companies, including Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and Google. CRCL then posted its second-worst trading day on record, dropping 17% and moving close to its historical low.
According to the thesis summarized by Artemis, the market assumed Stripe was trying to reorganize the stablecoin business, break up the Circle-Tether duopoly, and spread stablecoin revenue across alliance members. That interpretation, Artemis says, pushed CRCL to levels that do not reflect the company’s broader business model.
Three pillars behind the bullish case
Artemis frames its view around three core claims:
- The stablecoin market can grow at a 40% compound annual rate and exceed $1 trillion by 2030.
- Markets shaped by liquidity and network effects tend to stay concentrated, making it difficult for alliance-led products to take share quickly.
- Circle is being valued as a stablecoin issuer rather than as a full-stack money platform.
Stablecoins are no longer moving purely with crypto cycles
One of the report’s main points is that many investors still do not believe stablecoins can reach a $1 trillion market by 2030, often because they focus on periods when growth appeared to stall. Artemis argues that the structure of the market has changed.
For the first time, it says, stablecoin supply has decoupled from crypto price cycles. Even while crypto assets have traded 50% to 70% below prior highs, stablecoin supply has stayed broadly steady. Artemis reads that as evidence that stablecoins have developed into a more independent asset class. If the growth pace seen over the past three years continues, global supply could move past $1 trillion by 2030.
The report also points to concentration data. Despite hundreds of stablecoins already issued, Circle and Tether still account for more than 80% of supply. Artemis argues that liquidity built across chains, applications, and exchanges creates a lead that is difficult for challengers to replicate from scratch.
Open Standard meets only part of the test, Artemis says
Artemis does not dismiss OUSD outright, but it does question the assumption that a consortium model will quickly succeed. It says alliances rarely work unless a few conditions are in place.
Those conditions are listed as aligned member incentives, clear governance, and survival-level urgency among participants. Artemis says OUSD partly satisfies the first point through interest-sharing mechanics. It is less convinced on governance, noting that several partners named in official announcements later said they had not been consulted and had not clearly committed. On urgency, Artemis says most institutions still do not appear to view stablecoins as a make-or-break issue, though Stripe may be an exception.
Based on the information currently available, Artemis concludes that Open Standard satisfies only about one-third of the required conditions for success.
Why Circle’s valuation may be misframed
Artemis says the market has anchored Circle’s valuation to the idea that it is mostly a USDC issuer whose revenue depends heavily on interest income and, by extension, on Federal Reserve rate policy. That framing, in its view, explains why the company trades at a discount.
The report argues that Circle is better understood as a technology company building a full-stack money product set. If it succeeds in building a next-generation payment stack, Artemis says its valuation should look closer to payment networks that monetize transaction volume in basis points rather than to businesses defined mainly by float income.
On current numbers, Artemis places Circle’s revenue run rate at about $2.8 billion and its market capitalization at roughly $18 billion, implying a price-to-sales ratio of 6.7x. That compares with about 14x for payment networks and 17x for high-growth fintech names such as HOOD. Artemis also notes that Circle’s multiple is close to Coinbase’s, which the market still largely treats as a crypto exchange.
The path to a $50 billion valuation
Artemis says Circle is being boxed into two labels today: a business tied to crypto cycles and a business exposed to interest rates. If Circle can outrun both labels and broaden its revenue base, the firm believes a 10x sales multiple is a conservative and reasonable assumption.
Under a scenario where total stablecoin supply reaches $1 trillion by 2030, USDC holds 20% share, and interest rates are 2%, Artemis estimates Circle could generate $4 billion in interest income.
The report also highlights Circle Payments Network as an important growth engine. Even with crypto prices under pressure and stablecoin supply broadly flat, annualized volume on Circle Payments Network had reached $23 billion in the latest disclosure through the end of July 2026. That was up 6.8x year over year and 70% quarter over quarter, though Artemis notes the base was small. If volume compounds at 60% to 65% annually, it could approach $200 billion by 2030. At a 20 basis-point take rate, that would add another $400 million in revenue.
Artemis includes Arc as well. If the chain reaches the scale of another stablecoin-focused chain, Tron, the model assigns Arc $500 million in fee revenue.
Putting those pieces together, Artemis arrives at roughly $5 billion in revenue for CRCL, with about 20% coming from expanding payments and settlement-related business lines. Applying a 10x multiple to that revenue base produces a $50 billion valuation. On that math, Artemis says a $50 billion CRCL is not out of reach.