Key takeaways:
- The second-largest stablecoin, Circle’s USD Coin, has surpassed the $50 billion market cap milestone for the first time on Tuesday
- USDC’s circulating supply has increased by 10,000% in the two years since January 2020 as the number of active wallet addresses grew to 4.6 million
- USDC is quickly closing the gap with Tether’s USDT and currently accounts for roughly 30% of the total stablecoin circulating supply
USDC hits $50 bln market cap on the heels of 10,000% growth over the past two years
Circle’s USD Coin has reached a significant milestone on Tuesday, having surpassed $50 billion in circulating supply for the first time since launching in May 2018. With its recent expansion to the Flow platform, USDC is now providing liquidity and stable value transfers on eight different blockchain ecosystems, including Ethereum, Avalanche, Tron, and Solana.
Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, a cryptocurrency consortium backed by Coinbase and Bitmain that launched and develops USDC, shared interesting market data on the second-largest stablecoin in a Tuesday’s Twitter thread.
Allaire first alluded to the immense growth of the USDC network over the past two years – USDC’s market cap has increased by 10,000% since 2020, while approximately $2.5 trillion worth of on-chain transactions have been executed in 2021 alone. Circle’s CEO also added that the number of active wallet addresses grew to 4.6 million by the end of last year, and that more than 200 cryptocurrency products and services support USDC.
USDC is quickly closing the gap with USDT, now accounts for 30% of the total stablecoin supply
According to data curated by The Block, USDC accounts for roughly 30% of the total stablecoin supply, with Tether’s USDT still leading the way with more than half of the entire stablecoin market cap. However, the gap between the first-placed USDT and USDC is closing quickly, as can be seen in the chart below.
USDC’s share of stablecoin supply increased from 1% in October 2018 to 30% in February 2022. Image source: The Block
The largest share of USDC supply resides on the Ethereum chain, $45 billion as of February 1. Earlier in the month, USDC overtook USDT as the largest stablecoin on the leading smart-contract platform. Generally speaking, the stablecoin sector had grown by more than 400% in the 12 months since January 1, 2021, having increased from 29$ billion to $151 billion in a single calendar year.
USDC has managed to capitalize on different controversies surrounding Tether, ranging from misleading claims of being fully backed by the US dollar and alleged price manipulation of Bitcoin. Given its current growth trajectory and backing by a number of prominent crypto partners, including Coinbase and Solana, USDC could overtake USDT as the dominant stablecoin in the not too distant future.
