Citi believes that Circle Internet Group is best-positioned to win if stablecoins become the backbone of digital payments. The bank maintained its buy rating on the blockchain and fintech company and named it a top stock pick. Analyst Peter Christiansen also reiterated his $243 target price, which implies upside of 192%. Circle is flat since it went public last June but has added 5% this year. CRCL 1Y mountain CRCL 1Y chart On Wednesday, Circle reported better-than-expected results for the fourth quarter, sending shares up more than 35%. Circle, which issues two types of stablecoin including USDC, also reaffirmed that USDC would grow in circulation at a roughly 40% compound annual rate over a multi-year cycle. Beyond the beat, Christiansen pointed to a constructive and increasingly credible long-term narrative for USDC's role in digital payments and emerging artificial intelligence-driven commerce. "While 4Q'25 results were incrementally impressive, Circle struck a highly constructive and credible tone as to USDC's positioning towards potentially becoming the default rail for agentic AI commerce where autonomous agents require stable value, instant settlement, and global interoperability," he said. "The agentic commerce theme isn't new for stablecoins, although now an added sense of urgency given (i) rapid deployment of AI agents moving from experimentation to production, (ii) improving maturation of CPN and Arc that can support programmable, compliant settlement at scale, and (iii) improved regulatory that reduces adoption friction." The analyst added that this dynamic could expand Circle's economic opportunity as stablecoins move beyond payments and into AI-powered transactions. "Along with Circle's massive opportunity in cross-border payments, commentary on this AI convergence signals potential extension of reserve-income economics into embedded transaction infrastructure, where Circle's competitive pole position is sharply ahead, in our view," he said. "CRCL is our top overall pick." However, Christiansen did anticipated slower USDC in circulation growth in the first half of 2026, citing volatility in the overall cryptocurrency market causing some investors to trade out USDC for fiat currencies. However, he expects growth to pick back up in the latter half of 2026.
