Circle’s (CRCL) USDC has overtaken Tether’s USDT in transaction volumes for the first time since 2019, prompting Japanese investment bank Mizuho to raise its price target for the stablecoin issuer to $120 from $100, while reiterating its neutral rating on the stock.

The shares rose 1% in early trading to $115.40 and are up roughly 95% from their February lows.

Analysts Dan Dolev and Alexander Jenkins increased their Circle estimates, citing “USDC activity trends and use cases like Polymarket or agentic commerce expectations.”

Stablecoins, digital tokens backed by reserves such as fiat currency or gold, serve as key payment and settlement rails in the crypto economy, particularly for trading and cross-border transfers. The sector is dominated by Tether’s USDT with a $143 billion market cap, followed by Circle’s USDC at $78 billion.

According to their Friday report, USDC has recorded about $2.2 trillion in adjusted transaction volume so far in 2026, compared with $1.3 trillion for USDT. That gives USDC roughly 64% share of adjusted volumes, a sharp reversal from 2019–2025 when Tether consistently led, and USDC averaged about a 30% share.

The analysts said the shift matters because the long-term winner among stablecoins will likely be determined by real economic usage rather than market capitalization alone. Standard Chartered expects the stablecoin market cap to reach $2 trillion by the end of 2028.

Reflecting stronger USDC activity and expanding use cases, the Mizuho analysts raised several long-term Circle forecasts. They now expect “meaningful wallets” to reach 11.7 million by 2027, up from a prior estimate of 10 million, helping lift projected USDC market capitalization to $139 billion from $123 billion.

Circle has outperformed other crypto-linked equities recently.

William Blair analysts said in a Thursday note that while recent gains could easily be linked to rising oil prices and a potentially more hawkish Federal Reserve, other factors are likely driving the move.

They pointed instead to the resilience of USDC’s market capitalization despite the broader crypto downturn, along with increasing investor recognition of Circle’s economic model and its leadership in stablecoin infrastructure.

Other analysts pointed to a positioning-driven short squeeze rather than fundamentals as the driver of the recent move higher in the shares.

While the company delivered strong growth in USDC supply, the stock’s outsized reaction post earnings was driven more by crowded short bets heading into the print than by strong financials, according to Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research.

Read more: Circle’s outperformance highlights USDC’s staying power, says bullish Wall Street analyst

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) released a sweeping new document outlining its philosophy, priorities and long-term role in stewarding the world’s second-largest blockchain network.

The 38-page “EF Mandate,” published Friday, frames the blockchain, whose ether (ETH) token is beaten only by bitcoin BTC$71,803.36 in market capitalization, as a technology designed to protect individual freedom in an increasingly centralized digital world and lays out the principles the nonprofit says must guide its development.

The document comes at a time of transition for the organization, following recent shifts in Ethereum’s technical roadmap and the resignation earlier this year of one of the foundation’s co-executive directors.

“The Ethereum Foundation is the original steward of the Ethereum project,” the document says. “The Foundation is not the parent, owner, or ruler of Ethereum. We are not ‘the system’ itself.”

At the center of the mandate is the concept of self-sovereignty, which the foundation describes as Ethereum’s core purpose.

“The first aim is to ensure Ethereum becomes and stays a decentralized and resilient tool for self-sovereignty,” the manifesto states. “Our first fundamental principle is that a user has the final say over their identities, assets, actions, and agents.”

To preserve that goal, the foundation says four properties must remain central to Ethereum’s development: censorship resistance, open source and free (as in freedom), privacy, and security, collectively known as CROPS.

“We hold that these properties – CROPS – must remain, as an indivisible whole, the sine qua non of all Ethereum’s development priorities, which cannot be displaced,” the mandate says.

The foundation also said it will measure its own long-term success by how unnecessary it becomes. For the time being, it will focus on work that no other ecosystem participants are likely to undertake, including long-term protocol research, public-goods security work and coordination across development teams.

Once the broader ecosystem can take over those functions, it plans to step back.

“Our goal is to reduce the Foundation’s relative influence over time,” the team wrote. “Subtraction is rather a process of ensuring Ethereum’s maturity: a trajectory of growth with decentralization, robust enough to outgrow and outlast us.”

More broadly, the document situates the blockchain within an ecosystem of open technologies that support free and decentralized systems. The EF describes Ethereum as part of an “infinite garden,” an expanding network of builders, communities and institutions working to keep digital infrastructure open and resilient.

“The World Computer is decentralized infrastructure for permissionless compute, communication, and association,” the mandate states.

The manifesto concludes by reiterating the foundation’s long-term goal: protecting Ethereum’s promise as an open system that enables individuals and communities to coordinate without relying on centralized authorities.

“Our work is not about capturing markets, corporates, or states, nor about helping them extract or capture,” the document says. “We are here to uncapture the individual, and to entrench their freedoms of association.”

Read more: Ethereum Foundation leadership shake-up: Tomasz Stańczak out as co-executive director

Crypto exchange KuCoin has launched equity-linked perpetual derivatives tied to stocks, including Tesla and Strategy, allowing traders to speculate on their price movements through USDt-settled contracts that trade around the clock.

According to Friday’s announcement, the first listings include TSLAUSDT and MSTRUSDT perpetual contracts, which track price movements in the underlying equities but do not grant ownership of the shares. Instead, the products are synthetic derivatives settled in stablecoins.

The contracts have no expiration date and can be traded continuously. Positions can be opened with as little as 1 USDt (USDT), lowering the entry threshold for traders seeking exposure to equity-linked price movements through a crypto trading platform.

According to KuCoin, the product uses a pricing framework designed to track underlying equity benchmarks while accounting for differences between traditional stock market hours and the continuous trading environment of crypto derivatives markets.

Access to the contracts may be restricted in some jurisdictions depending on local regulations, the company said.

Founded in 2017, KuCoin says its platform serves more than 40 million users across more than 200 countries and lists over 1,000 digital tokens for trading. The exchange ranks eighth by spot trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap data.

MicroStrategy, which rebranded to Strategy in February 2025, is currently the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, with 738,731 BTC on its balance sheet. Tesla ranks as the 12th-largest public holder, with 11,509 BTC.

Related: SEC’s ‘Crypto Mom’ calls for simpler disclosure rules, flags tokenization debate

Fintechs and exchanges move to tokenize stocks

The market for tokenized equities has surged since the beginning of 2025. Tokenized stocks now have a total market value of about $1.03 billion, according to RWA.xyz data, up from around $291 million on Jan. 1, 2025.

Growth in the sector is being driven by fintech companies, crypto exchanges, and traditional brokerages alike.

In October, Robinhood expanded its tokenization initiative on the Arbitrum blockchain, adding 80 new stock tokens and bringing the total number of tokenized assets on the platform to nearly 500.

In June, more than 60 tokenized stocks became available on Kraken and Bybit following the launch of Backed Finance’s xStocks product. Last month, Kraken launched tokenized equity perpetual futures on its regulated derivatives platform, allowing eligible non-US clients to trade 24/7 leveraged exposure to major US stock indexes, gold and companies including Tesla, Nvidia, and Apple.

Traditional exchanges are also exploring the concept. In January, the New York Stock Exchange announced it is developing a platform for trading tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds with 24/7 trading and instant settlement, subject to regulatory approval.

In September, Nasdaq filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission seeking approval to list tokenized stocks. It has since partnered with Payward, Kraken’s parent company, and its subsidiary, Backed Finance, to develop an equities tokenization gateway. The platform is expected to begin offering services to issuers in the first half of 2027.

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