USDC Stablecoin Surpasses $600 Million Market Cap as Industry Adoption Accelerates

Amid the violent downturn that afflicted global financial markets in the last week, erasing over $50 Billion from crypto assets alone, USDC bucked the trend by growing in adoption and use across the open finance ecosystem and reaching $600 Million in market cap. $100 Million worth of circulating supply was issued during the weekend of March 14th alone.

USDC has already proven itself as a high quality, trusted digital asset that investors can depend on when stability and reliability is required. At the same time, USDC continues to be adopted in a wide range of other financial applications from payments to commerce to decentralized finance (DeFi) innovation.

Circle Announces New USDC Services for Businesses and Developers

Circle, a CENTRE co-founder, member, and USDC minter, announced last week a new set of services aimed at increasing the adoption of USDC for payments and commerce. The new services include Circle Business Accounts for companies using USDC and Circle APIs for companies building applications that need USDC payment and wallet services.

Circle Business Accounts give companies a simple way to acquire or redeem USDC via bank transfers at no cost from more than 80 countries. They also provide features for holding USDC and for making and receiving USDC payments.

The suite of Circle APIs empower developers to leverage USDC to drive innovation in payments, finance and commerce applications. With the Payments API, it’s straightforward to connect existing card rails directly into USDC, so businesses can easily accept card payments that settle in USDC. The Wallets API makes it possible to create applications that store and manage stablecoins, handle payments, and automate workflows without the complexity of running crypto infrastructure. The Marketplaces APIs support the unique needs of online marketplaces and multi-sided platform businesses.

Developers interested in learning more about the APIs can read the documentation and sign up for a free sandbox account to experiment with the services and test applications built with the APIs.

USDC Approved as Collateral Type on the Maker Protocol

On March 17th, Maker holders accepted USDC as a new collateral type in the Maker Protocol, making it only the third supported asset alongside ETH and BAT. We are excited to see users experiment with locking up USDC to generate Dai, expanding the synergies between these systems.

We recognize this development has stirred discussions in the DeFi community, and we are listening to the community on the potential impact that adding USDC as a collateral to the protocol might have on Dai users and the broader DeFi ecosystem. When we created the CENTRE Consortium, counterparty risk was a key concern. We sought to address that risk with strong transparency and a unique multi-issuer model that distributes control over USDC among multiple companies. However, because of the constraints imposed by integrating with existing banking and regulatory schemes, USDC has an inherent level of centralization. We believe in DeFi, and we’re very open to ongoing collaboration.

As mentioned before, we’re excited to see broader adoption of USDC within the Maker ecosystem. We share similar goals in terms of building solutions that advance the opportunities for financial innovation and inclusion using public blockchains.

6 Companies Join the USDC Ecosystem

Aside from Circle and Maker cited above, six other companies recently announced integration with USDC. These companies join more than 130 exchanges, protocols, platforms, applications, wallets, and service providers that are part of the USDC ecosystem:

Crypto.com was founded in 2016 on the belief that it is a basic human right for everyone to control their money, data and identity. Now, with a 250+ strong team out of Hong Kong, Crypto.com offers crypto exchange, wallet, loans and savings products, and even a Visa card connected to crypto balances, to over 1 million users. With Crypto.com portfolio of products, users can earn up to 12% p.a. on their USDC balances, get an instant USDC loan backed by crypto, or simply buy, sell and trade USDC.

Guarda Wallet is a lightweight non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet. It supports more than 10,000 assets across various chains, including Ethereum, TRON, NEO, and Binance Chain, and it’s available on Web, Desktop, Chrome Extension, and Mobile. The product also allows users to buy, sell and exchange assets right from the comfort and security of their wallets. With Guarda Wallet, users can safely store, send, receive and exchange their USDC tokens.

Matrixport offers retail and institutional customers innovative crypto-finance products across trading, investing, lending, and custody. Users can custody USDC, deposit USDC and enjoy up to 8% annual interest rates, or even use USDC with their innovative dual-currency investment product.

Outlet allows U.S. customers to earn 3–5x more interest than the best high yield savings accounts. It claims to be the first alternative savings product built on a blockchain with full coverage on all assets. USDC is a core component of Outlet’s stack, giving its customers the stability and trust they need to use the product.

Ramp Network helps bridge incumbent financial services and the exciting possibilities of blockchain. Ramp aims to help contribute to mass adoption of crypto by tackling one of the key issues — buying your first crypto, stress- and hassle-free. With Ramp, it takes less than 5 minutes for users to buy their first USDC.

Just like you can stream movies on Netflix or music on Spotify, so you can stream money on Sablier. Imagine getting paid every second and not waiting two, three or more weeks for your paycheck to arrive. Sablier makes this possible via an Ethereum application that works with ERC20 tokens. USDC is one of the most used tokens on Sablier — customers can very easily choose it as their selected token, and start streaming USDC.

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 asset-backed stablecoins.

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.