In the past two weeks, $CRCL has been the brightest star among crypto-related stocks.

Last night, after the earnings report was released, it surged by 14 points, once approaching the high point in March.
The key is that this time, the volume increase was driven by the positive news that Circle's own public chain @arc, valued at 3 billion USD, raised 222 million USD from top US VCs like A16z, BlackRock, and ARK Invest.
It also indirectly indicates that the market's valuation logic for Circle has been reconstructed, transforming from a stablecoin issuer into an institutional-grade public chain platform company.
Personally, I feel it’s a bit like the previous cycle’s Ripple, but more legitimate.
Because once the stablecoin legislation passes, the US banking system will open the door for USDC, which will bring unparalleled incremental growth to the crypto industry.
Additionally, in the most grand narrative track of AI, Circle has also made layouts with Agent Stack and x402.
This combination somewhat threatens ETH’s dominance as the king of public chains.
Because these US institutions could completely band together to issue their own chains (the cost and technical barriers of chain issuance are continuously decreasing) for settlement layers, gradually abandoning ETH and its Layer 2 ecosystem, similar to how Polymarket abandoned Polygon to create their own chain.
This is an unstoppable new trend, and it’s one of the reasons why ETH has been so sluggish recently.
Finally, I remembered the comparison chart of ETH vs 🥔 I saw a few days ago — it’s really hard to describe…
So, does ETH still have a future? I feel like the cost-effectiveness of regularly investing in CRCL is now higher.