USDC market capitalization tops $3 billion

The total market value of USDC Coin (USDC) in circulation rose above $3 billion, five times higher than at the start of the year.

Since its launch in 2018, USDC has processed over $230 billion in on-chain transactions, and as Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire contends, a $1 trillion capitalization is only a matter of time.

1/30 Just this week, $USDC crossed over 3 Billion in circulation, and has handled over 230B in on-chain transactions. We *are just getting started*! Here’s how we got here, and here’s the path to 1 Trillion USDC in circulation. https://t.co/4pRwUDL6TU

— Jeremy Allaire (@jerallaire) December 9, 2020

He says the milestone was driven by a rapid expansion of USDC use cases and growing support from hundreds of companies and institutional investors, as well as a large number of users.

According to Allaire, the Centre consortium of issuers has focused on working with the entire ecosystem – wallets, exchanges, and DeFi services.

Today USDC is used in lending and borrowing operations, trade finance, corporate treasury, in the issuance of security tokens, and as “safe digital dollars” for residents of Latin America, Asia and Africa.

The U.S. government enlisted the issuer of the USDC stablecoin to support the opposition in Venezuela

In Centre’s blog, it says that businesses and financial institutions using USDC benefit from instant settlements, inexpensive global and interchangeable transactions, immutability, lower counterparty risk and 24/7 accessibility.

Allaire is confident that the time has come for CBDC standards and stablecoins to be more actively integrated into fintech and banking business models. Further adoption of Bitcoin will be tightly linked to the integration of stablecoins into the financial system.

Allaire believes USDC will gain greater traction in financial contracts, tokenised funds and on “new” asset markets such as CeFi and DeFi.

Allaire sees an opportunity to extend USDC support to popular digital wallets worldwide, which would push its user base into the billions. Companies could more actively embed the stablecoin in smart contracts, in trading and blockchain-based settlements. Taken together, these factors offer a strong case for a $1 trillion capitalization, he says.

Allaire also called on the newly elected U.S. president Joe Biden to avoid erecting obstacles to innovation. He urged others to defend an open, uncensored and decentralised economic infrastructure.

Visa joined the global payments network to support USDC. In the future, this will enable cards that can directly accept this stablecoin as payment.

In parallel, in the U.S. Senate a bill was introduced, obligating stablecoin issuers to obtain banking licences and regulatory approval. Allaire called it “a huge step backward”.

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