After a brief pullback this week, shares of stablecoin issuer and recent IPO darling Circle were in rally mode again, soaring double-digits on a percentage basis during trading on Thursday and ending the day up close to 8%, after having moved up by more than 600% percent since its debut on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month.
Bitcoin and ether have led a recent crypto rise, as digital assets joined the resumption of the risk-on rally, with additional factors such as the potential for lower interest rates later this year, some more moderate talk from the White House on tariffs, and at least temporary easing of tensions in the Middle East.
But when it comes to Circle and the stablecoin boom, there's a more fundamental driver as Wall Street interest in the technology continues to evolve, and more ties are built between the old rails of the financial world and the new digital assets infrastructure.
Fiserv debuted a stablecoin earlier this week. Mastercard then linked that stablecoin to its network.
Credit cards are a good place to understand the opportunity, according to Zach Abrams, Bridge co-founder and CEO, who told CNBC's MacKenzie Sigalos that the market is estimated to grow into the trillions and could be the biggest global money-moving shift since the introduction of credit cards.
Some of the top private companies are already making major use of stablecoins today. Abrams cited the example of ScaleAI, into which Meta just invested over $14 billion, and which uses Bridge to pay data labelers all over the world. SpaceX also uses Bridge to convert payments made for its Starlink internet services in local currencies and bring the money back to the U.S.
"We think that stablecoins are an entirely new money-movement platform, like credit cards were decades ago," Abrams said in an interview for Thursday's "Crypto World."
"[Credit cards] created trillions in value and I think stablecoins will be the same," he said. "We think it's going to be a very big change that will play out over many years," he added.
Bridge was recently acquired by private fintech giant Stripe for $1.1 billion.
Abrams said as regulatory clarity increases, more traditional financial players will want to get in on the opportunity. Stablecoins, less than a decade old, are today a $400 billion market, and Abrams says that if, as most banks think, the market "will get to a few trillion" it is a market where peeling off some of that share has to be a focus.
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