The second most popular stablecoin USD Coin has experienced tremendous weekly growth after adding 300 million USDC to the circulating supply, bringing the total to 3.3 billion USDC. The growth has been linked to high demand for USDC in the crypto market.
CEO and co-founder of Circle Fintech Company Jeremy Allaire announced via Twitter that the total circulating amount has surpassed the recent 3 billion milestones by 300 million, in barely one week.
“Just a week ago, we shared that USD Coin $USDC had crossed 3 billion in circulation. We’re now well over 3.3 billion across chains, 10% week/week growth. Growing and adoption.”
USDC is a fully collateralized US Dollar stablecoin that is popular for offering high speed, low cost, and instant settlement advantages over regular payments networks. Â
USDC’s growth is driven by high global demand for digital dollars
The fintech firm stated that the demand for USDC is rising as more companies and financial institutions switch to dollar-pegged stablecoins for their treasuries and payments operations.
Circle uses USDC to foster a new era of integration between traditional finance and digital dollars, by enabling the development and growth of financial applications, payment systems, and commerce around digital dollar stablecoins.
Circle earlier announced that USDC has grown by over 500% after surpassing the 3 billion USDC in circulation last week. In January 2020, USDC had a total circulating supply of 400 million USDC.
The London-based firm added that digital dollarization, the growth of the digital assets markets such as decentralized finance, and the rapidly changing global macro trends in commerce and consumer behavior have expanded USDC’s use cases.
“Dramatic growth has brought major commercial players to this innovative new infrastructure for the financial system.”
Another key reason for the massive gain is the growth of the DeFi industry. Many USDC holders are using the stablecoin in diverse lending and borrowing smart contracts. Data from DeFi Pulse shows that the total amount of digital assets, including USDC that are locked in smart contracts now stands at over $14 billion.
Demand has also been noted to be higher in emerging economies, in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Hundreds of firms are exploring digital dollars
Since Q2 2020, Circle said that it has added hundreds of new companies from various industries to its digital currency platform to help them connect their traditional financial systems with blockchain rails and stablecoins.
The two-year-old stablecoin was launched in 2018 and has supported over $230 billion in transactions across different use cases and industries. USDC’s rival stablecoin Tether is more popular with a higher rank and market cap of $19.8 billion compared to USDC’s market cap of $3.3 billion at 12th position.
