Just a couple weeks ago, the Centre Consortium announced that USD Coin (USDC) reached a $1 billion market cap milestone in a little over 20 months since launch. The growth trajectory continues as USDC has now surpassed $1.1 billion — a trend reflecting increasing global demand for a fully reserved, transparent, and compliant digital dollar stablecoin.
As noted in the Centre blog post, individuals and businesses around the world have embraced digital dollars as local currencies have experienced increased volatility under the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic and global financial crisis. At the same time, businesses of all sizes are realizing the advantages of payments made on a global, interoperable infrastructure, with low-cost and nearly-instant transfers and settlement. In addition to traditional payment and e-commerce use cases, demand is also being propelled by entirely new industry sectors, including the fast-growing decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.
The numbers are staggering. In a research note published by our friends at Messari, data shows that there are now more than 12 billion US dollar stablecoins in circulation, and on-chain transactions from stablecoins represent the largest category of usage and transaction volume on blockchains. Their analysis also suggests that on-chain stablecoin transactions are on track to approach $600B in volume this year, just slightly behind PayPal's $712B in 2019.
At Circle, we've been working hard to help people around the world leverage these convergent trends and bring the benefits of USDC to their business. With a new kind of global financial account and a suite of platform APIs for payments, wallets and marketplaces, businesses have been launching innovative financial applications that increase efficiency and unlock incremental value. As a fortuitous byproduct, these efforts are also creating more open and inclusive economic opportunities for many who have been historically underserved.
It's a truly exciting and rewarding time to be in this space. If you’re interested in learning how Circle can help your organization, open a Circle Business Account or give our APIs a test drive. We're also hiring — please visit our jobs board if you're interested in exploring career opportunities at Circle. Our mission is lofty, but every day we're making progress in our pursuit to raise global economic prosperity through programmable internet commerce.
