Cathie Wood says Visa and Mastercard analysts are sleeping on Circle’s disruption

Cathie Wood has never been one to whisper her convictions, and her latest target is the analyst community covering Visa and Mastercard. The ARK Invest founder argued on August 23 that Wall Street’s traditional payments analysts fundamentally do not understand the threat Circle Internet Group poses to the incumbents, even as CRCL shares have climbed 84% since the company’s June 2025 IPO.

Meanwhile, Visa and Mastercard have barely budged this year, posting year-to-date gains of just 5% and 1% respectively. In Wood’s view, that gap tells a story about market inefficiency, not market wisdom.

The numbers backing Wood’s thesis

Circle’s recent financial performance gives Wood more than just vibes to work with. The company reported net income of $48 million in Q2 2026, a sharp reversal from a loss in the prior-year period. Transaction revenue doubled over the same stretch.

The engine behind those results is USDC, Circle’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, which now commands 62% of market share in stablecoin transaction volumes. That dominance translated into roughly $849 billion in transaction volume as of July 2026.

Zoom out further, and the scale becomes even harder to ignore. USDC processed a record $5.3 trillion in transactions during the first half of 2026.

CRCL shares debuted at $31 on June 5, 2025, and briefly touched nearly $299 before pulling back sharply. The stock currently trades about 58% below that peak. A 30% rally in July, fueled by the strong Q2 earnings report, helped rebuild some of the lost ground.

Competition is arriving, and it brought friends

Wood’s bullish thesis doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Circle faces a formidable new challenger in the Open USD consortium, which launched around June 30, 2026, with a roster of backers that reads like a fintech all-star team. Stripe, Coinbase, and BlackRock are among the partners supporting the rival OUSD stablecoin.

The irony is thick: Visa and Mastercard, the very companies whose analysts Wood is criticizing for ignoring stablecoin disruption, have also joined the OUSD consortium. So while their equity research desks may not be sounding the alarm, their corporate strategy teams apparently got the memo.

For Circle, the OUSD consortium represents the most credible competitive threat USDC has faced. Having Coinbase, one of Circle’s closest historical partners, backing a rival stablecoin adds a layer of complexity to the competitive landscape that straightforward market share numbers don’t fully capture.

What Wood is really arguing about

Traditional payments analysts model Visa and Mastercard based on transaction volumes flowing through card networks, interchange fees, and cross-border revenue. Wood’s argument is that those models are becoming outdated when a stablecoin can process trillions of dollars in transactions at a fraction of the cost of traditional card rails.

ARK Invest has maintained a significant position in CRCL shares through the stock’s volatility. Circle’s shift from a business model primarily built on earning yield from USDC reserves toward a more diversified payments infrastructure and blockchain services company suggests management sees the same future Wood does: one where stablecoin issuance is table stakes, and the real value lies in the rails built on top of it.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.