Circle shares recover as crypto stocks rally
Circle has become one of the sharper movers in the recent rebound across crypto-linked U.S. equities. Over the past week, bitcoin rose more than 20%, and that rally helped lift stocks tied to the crypto sector. Circle stood out in particular: after falling to around $57 in early August, the shares are now trading near $87, a rebound of roughly 50% from the low.
Cathie Wood added another layer to the renewed attention in a recent post. As she put it, technology is disrupting the old world order, and Circle will be a major beneficiary.
Why the market sold Circle off
The earlier selloff was triggered by OpenUSD. On June 30, the Open Standard alliance, which includes more than 140 payment, banking, technology and crypto companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Google and Coinbase, announced OpenUSD (OUSD), a stablecoin expected to go live later this year.
The plan goes straight at Circle’s core model. Under the traditional setup, the interest earned on stablecoin reserves belongs to the issuer. OpenUSD aims to share that revenue with distribution and ecosystem partners, while also charging no minting or redemption fees and imposing no cap. Circle stock fell about 17% on the day the announcement was made.
The bearish case was simple: Circle’s business looked too narrow, built mainly on issuing USDC and collecting reserve yield. If a competitor of OpenUSD’s scale enters with a revenue-sharing model, the stock is the first thing to get hit.
Wood’s bull case: a new financial stack
Wood’s argument is that the market is still pricing Circle with a Visa and Mastercard-era framework, when the company may actually be helping build the next layer of payment and financial infrastructure.
That shifts the discussion away from USDC alone and toward whether Circle is becoming part of a deeper financial network.
Arc and CCTP are already in motion
Circle already has some real infrastructure to point to.
The first is Arc, Circle’s own Layer 1 blockchain built for USDC and on-chain financial activity. On Arc, transaction fees are paid directly in USDC. On general-purpose chains such as Ethereum and Solana, fees are typically paid in ETH or SOL. Arc is designed for large financial institutions, with built-in compliance and KYC features, making it closer to a regulated financial private network. The project has drawn support from multiple traditional financial institutions, and JPMorgan has made a large equity investment.
The second is CCTP, Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol. Using a burn-and-mint mechanism, it lets native USDC move across dozens of blockchains without relying on third-party bridges, which helps avoid the bridge security issues that have long plagued the industry.
With a dedicated chain and a cross-chain protocol, Circle is trying to move from a token issuer to what the article calls an internet financial operating system.
AI Agent payments add a longer-term angle
The piece also points to a more distant demand curve: AI agents.
Machines naturally favor payment rails that are low-cost, instant, global, programmable and API-native. Those traits fit stablecoins almost perfectly. If agent-to-agent and machine-to-machine activity scales up, every automated settlement between AI systems could create another source of stablecoin demand.
Big narrative, limited execution so far
Still, the article is clear that most of these ideas remain narrative for now. Circle has not yet delivered enough to prove that it has already built next-generation payment and financial infrastructure.
For investors, the article argues against treating Circle as a stock to double next month. Instead, it frames the company as a long-duration infrastructure option: size the position carefully, think long term and wait for the story to play out.
Wood is not betting on next quarter’s earnings. She is betting on the next decade of financial rails.