Digital Securities
USDC Stablecoin Hits Billion Dollar Marketcap
The Billion Mark
USDC is a stablecoin from Centre – a joint effort by both Circle, and Coinbase. Less than two years since its birth, USDC reached a billion dollar marketcap this past week.
The following is a brief timeline of USDC, and when various mile-markers were achieved.
- 500 million achieved in Dec 2019
- 600 million achieved in Mar 2020
- 1 billion achieved in July 2020
With the meteoric rise of DeFi, and interest in stablecoins, it doesn’t look like it will be long until USDC hits the $2 billion mark.
While a $2 billion marketcap will surely occur over the long run, the next point of interest for gauging the growth of USDC would be this coming September. This will mark the 2 year anniversary since USDC was first launched. Where will the marketcap fall at this time?
Pulling Away from the Competition
With news of this achievement, we took a brief look at the market caps of various USDC rivals. From the following figures, it is clear that USDC is beginning to separate themselves from the pack.
- USDC (18th largest coin)
- $1.04 billion
- PAX (40th largest coin)
- $245.13 million
- GUSD (386th largest coin)
- $10.23 million
A first mover’s advantage is nothing to dismiss. As impressive as USDC has been in its short life, thus far, Tether still reigns supreme in the world of stablecoins. This is on full display when looking at market caps, as Tether still outnumbers USDC by over 9x.
With a marketcap of $9.19 billion, Tether is the 3rd largest coin tracked today. While USDC has begun to put distance between themselves and other offerings, such as GUSD and PAX, it has a long way to go in dethroning current stablecoin king, Tether.
*figures drawn from CoinMarketCap at time of writing*
Fastest Horse
Beyond attaining a billion dollar market cap, USDC has managed to do so in record time. This speedy rate of adoption makes the – now billion dollar – market cap even more impressive.
For a simple comparison, leading stablecoin Tether took over 3 years to achieve the same goal.
Why the Fuss?
Upon announcing news of their achievement, Centre took the time to expand on a couple reasons for the impressive growth of USDC. Ranging from market volatility, to increased desire for monetary efficiency, Centre provided the following commentary.
“In 2020, multiple factors are driving continued rapid growth. At a macro level, the financial crisis caused by COVID-19 has resulted in currency volatility across many developing economies. Demand for digital dollars that are fast, global, secure, and inexpensive has increased significantly as a result.
Secondly, businesses around the world are beginning to seek the advantages of payments made via an entirely new, digital, global and interoperable infrastructure that enables low-cost transfers anywhere nearly instantly.”
A Wise Move
Now that a modest amount of time has passed, it would appear as though past decisions by Circle to double down on stablecoins was quite prudent.
The past decisions involved the controversial sale of various company endeavours. Namely, Poloniex, barely a year after the exchange was acquired by Circle for a sum of roughly $440 million.
To learn more about how Circle found themselves where they are today, make sure to peruse the following article.
