Few names lit up Wall Street in 2025 like one crypto sector’s breakout IPO.
It tore out of the gate last June, minted overnight winners, and quickly became the stock every trader wanted a piece of. For a few heady weeks, it looked unstoppable.
Today, the crypto stock trades at 66% below its all-time high.
One high-profile money manager hasn’t flinched, though. As the share price slid month after month, she kept buying, and the stock now ranks among her largest holdings.
Why Circle stock became a crypto market bellwether
Circle Internet Group isn’t a meme coin or a mining play. It’s the company behind USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin.
A stablecoin is a digital dollar. One USDC is always equal to one U.S. dollar, backed by cash and short-term Treasuries.
That makes Circle (CRCL) less of a crypto gamble and more of a plumbing company for digital money.
Circle went public in June 2025 at $31 a share. Within weeks, it reached a closing high of $263.45 on June 23, 2025.
That’s a stunning run for any new listing.
Since then, reality has set in. At the time of writing, CRCL stock trades around $91, valuing the company at a market cap of $22.5 billion.
The digital-asset market is down over 50% from its October 2025 peak, and Circle got swept up in the tide.
When you understand why the stock fell, the next part gets a lot more interesting.
Cathie Wood keeps buying Circle stock during the slump
Here’s the twist. While most investors headed for the exits, Cathie Wood remained bullish.
Her ARK funds first bought Circle in Q2 of 2025, scooping up 2.92 million shares, according to data from Stock Circle.
- Q3 2025: Added 42,500 shares at an average closing price of $138.55
- Q4 2025: Added 1.17 million shares (a 39.6% jump) at an average of $102.88
- Q1 2026: Added another 368,000 shares at an average of $80.20
Add it up, and ARK now holds 4.51 million Circle shares worth about $408 million. That’s 2.72% of the equity portfolio and her 10th-largest position.
Fund manager buys and sells
- Cathie Wood buys $2.5 million of tumbling megacap stock
- Warren Buffett dumped 77% of Amazon to buy surging media stock
- Cathie Wood buys $11 million of tumbling megacap tech stock
ARK owns roughly 1.35% of all outstanding Circle stock.
Wood’s estimated cost basis sits near $98.60 a share. With the stock around $90, that’s a paper loss of about 8.1%.
Wood’s playbook rarely tracks short-term sentiment. She buys disruptors when they’re cheap and unloved, betting the long-term story wins out. Circle fits that mold perfectly.
A strong performance in Q1
In its first-quarter report, Circle said:
- USDC in circulation rose 28% year over year to $77 billion, while on-chain transaction volume jumped 263% to $21.5 trillion.
- Total revenue and reserve income came in at $694 million, up 20%. Adjusted EBITDA rose 24% to $151 million, indicating a healthy 53% margin.
CEO Jeremy Allaire also leaned hard into two themes: real-world adoption and artificial intelligence.
On adoption, he pointed to Meta (META) using USDC for creator payouts, DoorDash (DASH) paying drivers in it, and Block’s (XYZ) Cash App rolling out USDC payments.
Allaire said USDC now handles as much as 80% of all on-chain dollar stablecoin transactions.
On AI, Circle launched its Agent Stack, letting AI agents hold wallets and pay each other in tiny amounts. On the leading agent-payment protocol, called x402, Circle says USDC settles 99.8% of transactions.
“USDC already has an enormous lead in Agentic payments today, with 99.8% of all x402-Agentic payments being settled using USDC,” Allaire explained.
The company also raised $222 million in a presale of its new Arc token, led by a16z crypto, valuing the network at $3 billion.
The bull case rests on a future that hasn’t fully arrived.
Related: Goldman Sachs cuts Coinbase target as outlook turns cautious
USDC circulation was flat quarter over quarter and revenue still leans heavily on interest earned from reserves, which shrinks when the Federal Reserve cuts rates.
And competition from Tether, Stripe, and the big banks is heating up.
Having watched the market chew up high-flying IPOs for years, I’ve learned that a great story and a great stock aren’t always the same thing, at least not on the same timeline.
Is CRCL stock undervalued right now?
According to data from Tikr.com, analysts tracking Circle stock forecast revenue to rise from $2.75 billion in 2025 to $7.51 billion in 2029.
In this period, adjusted earnings per share are forecast to expand from $2.35 to $7.95.
If CRCL stock is priced at 30x forward earnings, which is reasonable given its growth estimates, it could surge roughly 160% within the next 40 months.
Out of the 19 analysts covering Circle stock, 12 recommend “buy”, six recommend “hold,” and one recommends “sell.”
The average CRCL stock price target is $146, implying meaningful upside from current levels.
Wall Street clearly agrees with Wood. Whether the rest of the market catches up is the bet she’s still making.
Related: Goldman Sachs analyst delivers shock message on Circle after blowout quarter
