Bitwise's Rasmussen calls Circle mispriced as stablecoin market eyes trillions

Bitwise Head of Research Ryan Rasmussen has argued publicly that investors are materially undervaluing Circle, contending that the stablecoin issuer’s payments infrastructure ambitions remain largely invisible to the market. Speaking on CoinDesk’s Public Keys programme, Rasmussen framed Circle not merely as a beneficiary of reserve income but as a company building a second business line capable of competing with global payments networks.

Rasmussen expects the stablecoin market to expand from its current size of roughly $300 billion to somewhere between $3 trillion and $5 trillion, and he sees Circle as unusually well positioned to capture that growth. His reasoning centres on existing market share, a head start in a regulatory environment that is beginning to clarify for US-based issuers, and the development of Arc, a layer-1 blockchain Rasmussen described as purpose-built for stablecoin payment flows. He compared Circle’s potential long-run trajectory to that of Visa and Mastercard.

On competition, Rasmussen acknowledged that banks and consumer-facing incumbents are moving to launch their own stablecoins, pointing to initiatives such as OpenUSD as evidence of that trend. He argued, however, that overall market expansion could be rapid enough for Circle to grow even as new entrants arrive, with consistent execution in the regulated segment as its durable edge. The near-term question he flagged is whether Arc gains adoption inside the traditional financial system and how that uptake reshapes Circle’s unit economics over the coming year.