The world’s second largest stablecoin by market capitalization just hit the $50 billion mark, according to data from CoinGecko. Circle’s USDC keeps on growing as it erodes the dominance of the current leader, Tether’s USDT.
The stablecoin landscape is constantly shifting; from dollar-backed stablecoins to programmable stablecoins. However one trend has become clear over the past year which is that Tether’s dominance in the stablecoin sector is constantly diminishing.
Circle’s co-founder and CEO, Jeremy Allaire, also tweeted about the landmark achievement stating, “While 50B USDC is a big number, it’s the massive growth and ecosystem around it that tells the broader story.”
What you should know
Allaire in his Twitter trend also highlighted some of the achievements Circle has had over the years. He stated, “Over 100B issued, with over 50B in circulation. Why does that matter? It works and has ALWAYS been redeemable for a dollar with best in class integration with the banking system.”
Circle’s stablecoin market capitalization expanded by 987% in 2021 according to CoinGecko. When compared to, Tether’s USDT supply, which saw less than a third of that growth with 275% over the same period, it is evident that the growth and adoption of USDC have been at an astronomical rate as it is getting more users, using its token.
According to the Circle CEO, the stablecoin network grew by 10,000% over the past two years and has seen $2.5 trillion in on-chain transactions and 4.6 million active wallet addresses in 2021 alone. He also mentioned that the USDC token runs and its currently available on eight different distinct blockchains. He stated that USDC is also supported by 200 protocols and can be traded in more than 180 countries on 34 exchanges. Although Tether’s USDT is till the dominant force in the stablecoin ecosystem, however, the Goldman Sachs-backed digital payment company Circle is closing in fast.
As previously reported, the USDC supply has already flipped USDT on the Ethereum network. Tether supply is currently split mostly between Ethereum and Tron with around 39 billion and 36 billion USDT on each network respectively and the rest on a handful of others such as Solana, Omni, and Algorand according to its transparency report.
The total stablecoin supply currently stands at $177 billion, equating to around 9.7% of the total crypto market capitalization. Tether commands around 45% of that total, whereas Circle now takes a 29% share as the gap between them closes. When compared to last year, Tether had a dominance of 74% with Circle taking just 16% of the stablecoin pie.
Circle has announced that it had expanded its multi-chain ecosystem by adding support for Dapper Labs’ Flow network.