Shares of stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) soared to a fresh record high on Monday extending their explosive rally since its IPO and making the company worth almost as much as its flagship token's market capitalization. Shares were up another 22% at one point Monday morning, hitting a record high just shy of $299, before giving back some of the advance. The stock closed around $263, up 9% for the session. Since the IPO earlier this month priced at $31, shares have appreciated a whopping 750%. At its peak, Circle’s market capitalization reached roughly $60 billion, putting it nearly on par with the $61.3 billion supply of its USDC USDC stablecoin. It also brings the firm within striking distance of crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), which has a market cap of about $78 billion. Circle’s surge this month is a testament to the soaring investor appetite for the fast-growing stablecoin market, a crypto sector with few publicly-traded pure plays. USDC remains the second-largest dollar-pegged token in circulation, and it's widely used across exchanges and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and increasingly popular for payments and cross-border transactions. Catalysts that helped to fuel the rally was the U.S. Senate passing the so-called GENIUS Act last week, advancing regulation for the asset class that some believe it could reach trillions over the next years. Read more: Circle's Allaire: Stablecoins Could Expand by Trillions in 10 Years, Will Be Integral Part of Global Financial System Still, some analysts warn the rally may be running ahead of fundamentals. The rally put Circle in the market cap league of well-established fintech giants like Robinhood ($68 billion), Nubank ($59 billion), Block ($38 billion), and not far from Coinbase ($78 billion), according to Jon Ma, CEO of crypto analytics firm Artemis. The company also trades at eye-watering valuation multiples rarely seen among its fintech and crypto peers: 32x its revenue, 80x its gross profit, 152x EBITDA, and 285x earnings, Ma pointed out. "Not a lot of upside in the current model," he said in a previous post on Thursday.
