Author: TVBee
Agreed to research individual stocks, but unexpectedly still related to the crypto-related Circle ( $CRCL ), but in fact, this is a project caught between Web2 and Web3.
┈➤ In terms of business
╰✦Web3: Secondary market and the first stablecoin in DeFi
USDC is both the base currency for trading pairs in the secondary market and the first stablecoin in the DeFi ecosystem.
According to data from DeFiLlama, USDC's DeFi TVL is $11.456 billion, far exceeding USDT's $8.714 billion.
╰✦Web2: Payments
In the e-commerce field, Stripe supports users to pay with USDC, while merchants ultimately receive USD.
Visa, on the other hand, is the opposite; users pay in fiat currency during consumption, and the consumer payment card can settle in USDC with the bank that processes merchant payments.
╰✦AI Agent payments
As the main payment unit of the X402 protocol, it is being integrated into Web2 through AI Agents.
┈➤ In terms of revenue
Circle's revenue is closely linked to both the crypto market and Web3 payments and is also closely related to macro factors.
According to the Q1 2026 financial report, 94% of Circle's revenue comes from reserve income, which refers to the asset reserves used to issue USDC as collateral or backing.
This is mainly divided into two parts, one being the interest on dollar deposits and the other being the yield from holding US treasury bonds.
Therefore, as the scale of USDC increases, Circle's reserves will grow, and the corresponding revenue will also increase.
The Federal Reserve's fiscal policy and macroeconomic environment will directly and indirectly affect dollar deposit rates and treasury bond yields, thereby impacting USDC's reserve income.
Thus, Circle's revenue is influenced by Web3, stablecoin payments, AI industries, and is also related to macro factors.
┈➤ In terms of growth
╰✦US stock trading on platforms like Binance may increase the demand for USDC
In addition to crypto, the secondary market for US stocks on CEX also requires USDC.
Binance officially launched US stock trading this month, and Binance’s US stock trading is based on USDC, although it also supports other stablecoins, which will be converted to USDC for trading.
Moreover, when selling US stocks, the payment received is USDC.
Therefore, Binance's US stock trading is likely to increase the demand for USDC. After all, Binance has a large market size.
╰✦The latter half of the bear market may increase the demand for stablecoins
Since October last year, the crypto bear market has lasted for more than eight months. It is now likely entering the latter half of the crypto cycle, and this stage creates a demand for stablecoins.
Exchanges need to hold stablecoins to timely buy BTC or other cryptocurrencies.
In both 2018 and 2022, just before the final drop, the market cap of USDT grew.
The decrease in USDC's market cap in 2022 was due to the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank in March, which indirectly caused USDC to temporarily lose its peg. There hasn't been a similar situation this year, so the demand for USDC in the secondary market may increase.
╰✦Payments may increase the holding amount of USDC
Previously, it was analyzed that #Paypal's stablecoin PYUSD is the fastest-growing stablecoin, adequately indicating that the Web2 market's demand for stablecoin payments has potential.
On the other hand, USDC, as the main payment unit of the X402 protocol, is being integrated into Web2 through AI Agents.
Data from Chainalysis shows that in the X402 protocol, transactions over $1 are clearly trending upwards, whereas transactions under $1 are decreasing.
The judgment is that speculative and test transactions are decreasing, but actual payments are increasing.
Official data from X402 shows that in the last month, there were 75.41 million transactions with a total transaction amount of $24.24 million, with 94,060 buyers and 22,000 sellers.
On average, each buyer made 701.72 transactions, indicating that the payers in the X402 protocol are primarily AI.
On average, each seller corresponds to 4.27 buyers, receiving 3,427.73 payments, indicating that these are likely real payment projects or institutions rather than test projects.
╰✦The impact of interest rate hikes
Currently, the market expects one interest rate hike in September 2026. Although it is not yet certain whether an increase will occur, market expectations will affect fluctuations in treasury bond yields.
┈➤ In terms of trading
The blue line represents the market cap of USDC, the green line represents "USDC market cap * 2-month treasury bond yield," and the orange line represents the stock price of CRCL.
It can be seen that from October last year to the present, CRCL has generally followed the trend of "USDC market cap * 2-month treasury bond yield." The chart indicates that CRCL may be slightly undervalued.
┈➤ In conclusion
There shouldn't be barriers between US stocks and crypto.
From an industrial perspective, crypto is essentially a branch of IT, just another channel of information technology.
It’s just converting centralized servers into distributed servers with multiple nodes;
Transforming the "one-to-many" service relationship between server and client into a "many-to-many" peer relationship;
Making the opaque or centralized so-called transparency into decentralized and more transparent...
From a financial perspective, crypto ETFs are gradually launching, and the RWA of stocks is heating up.
Circle ( $CRCL ) is actually a compound enterprise with one foot in crypto, the other in payments, closely related to macro factors.
US stock trading on platforms like Binance, the latter half of the crypto bear market, and the growing demand from traditional finance and crypto ecosystems for Web3 payments may drive the scale of USDC, which will increase Circle's reserve assets and reserve income.
On the other hand, interest rate hikes or expectations of interest rate hikes in the United States may push up Circle's yields.
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