USD Coin (USDC) solidified its position as a leading digital dollar as its market cap crossed $1 billion earlier today. USDC achieved that mark only 21 months after launch, making it the fastest-growing digital dollar stablecoin to cross that threshold.
Since launch, USDC has achieved product-market fit in traditional crypto, with hundreds of exchanges and wallets using it on a daily basis. In 2019, we witnessed the explosion of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, which led to an increase in demand for USDC.
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.
Finally, recent innovations in the governance of the Compound protocol have driven significant demand for USDC, highlighting DeFi as a space with high growth potential.
We expect USDC to continue growing rapidly throughout 2020 and help fulfill Centre Consortium’s mission of establishing an open standard for money on the internet.
More about USDC & Centre
USDC was introduced by the Centre Consortium, an organization co-founded by Circle and Coinbase, to establish an open standard for fiat on the internet and provide a governance framework and network for the global, mainstream adoption of fiat-backed stablecoins. In June, Centre announced a framework for multi-chain support of USDC so that other blockchains can leverage the foundation and standards that have been created.
You can learn more about USDC here, and tokenize or redeem USDC with both Circle and Coinbase. You can go here to read the monthly reports on US dollar reserves backing USDC issued by independent accounting firm, Grant Thornton LLP.
USDC market cap exceeds $1 Billion, Fastest-Growing Digital Dollar Stablecoin to Do So was originally published in CENTRE blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.