Bernstein: Circle, Coinbase lead stablecoin exposure

Analysts at Bernstein, led by Gautam Chhugani, named Circle and Coinbase as the most direct ways to gain stablecoin exposure in a note to clients on Monday. The report pointed to the companies’ partnership around USD Coin (USDC) and to early experiments in software-driven “agentic machine payments.”

The note defined machine payments as transactions initiated, authorized, and settled entirely by software or autonomous devices. “We view agentic machine payments as an upside optionality for stablecoins,” the analysts wrote. “This is not a ‘here and now’ material impact on stablecoin demand, but some potential role of stablecoins in the agentic machine economy.”

According to the report, stablecoins fit these use cases because they can embed payment logic, settle in seconds, support very small transactions, and work across borders. Escrow, conditional release, and revenue splits can be programmed into tokens, enabling automated agents to make real-time decisions and settle without human callbacks or bank approval. Fast settlement allows AI agents to pay for compute or data on demand. The note cited high-throughput blockchains and state channels as ways to keep microtransactions economical at scale. Because stablecoins are borderless, they avoid SWIFT, correspondent banking, and foreign exchange conversion.

Several companies are building related infrastructure. Coinbase is developing the x402 agent payments protocol, which integrates payments into the internet’s HTTP layer. Circle has launched nano payments tooling for software agents. Stripe introduced the Machine Payments Protocol on the Tempo blockchain through its investments in Bridge and Privy. Reported volumes remain small: x402 processed about $25 million over the last 30 days, while Stripe’s protocol logged roughly $5,000 in its first week.

Bernstein’s broader stablecoin thesis centers on steady growth in consumer and enterprise payments. The note highlighted business cross-border settlements, consumer remittances, and card-linked stablecoin neo-banking as active areas. USDC’s circulating supply and transaction volumes are at record levels, supported by new fintech firms building on stablecoin rails. The analysts added that USDC leads by transaction volume share even though it ranks second by market capitalization.

The note presented Circle and Coinbase as the clearest proxies for stablecoin exposure, with machine payments described as incremental upside rather than a base case.

The document disclosed that Chhugani holds long positions in various cryptocurrencies, and that certain Bernstein affiliates act as market makers or liquidity providers in the equity securities of Circle and Coinbase.