USDC will be welcomed by five new blockchain ecosystems
Circle Internet Financial, the fintech firm behind USD Coin (USDC) announced that it will expand the circulation of USDC to five more blockchain ecosystems. The announcement was made at Converge 22a blockchain conference hosted by Circle in San Francisco.
More about the extension
By the end of 2022, USDC will begin circulating on blockchains Polkadot, Arbitrum One, Optimism and NEAR. According to Circle’s press release, the second largest stablecoin will be made available on the Cosmos ecosystem in early 2023.
Joao Reginatto, VP of product at Circle, said in a statement,
“The multi-chain expansion is intended to increase USDC’s initial availability from eight ecosystems to thirteen, enabling blockchain developers building on USDC and their users to experience greater liquidity and interoperability within the crypto-economy.”
“Expanding multi-chain support for USDC opens the door for institutions, exchanges, developers and more to innovate and have easier access to a reliable and stable digital dollar” added Reginatto.
During the conference, Circle also revealed the cross-chain transfer protocol, which will help the USDC by enabling efficient transactions across different blockchains.
In addition to that, the protocol will help developers create dApps, wallets and other tools to streamline USDC operations across networks.
Fierce rivalry
This news comes as a relief to USDC investors, who witnessed the stablecoin behemoth exiled from Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world. India’s WazirX exchange followed in Binance’s steps and did a similar thing announcement just days later.
Both exchanges announced the delisting of USDC, along with USDP and TUSD, as part of the BUSD auto-conversion feature. This move is set to convert all the balances of the three stablecoins into Binance-issued BUSD.
Therefore, USDC’s multi-chain expansion comes at a critical time, given the growing heat from rival stablecoin issuers, as well as DeFi platforms that have begun launching their own stablecoins.
These developments have contributed to USDC circulation falling more than 10% from $55 billion to $49 billion since last month.
USDC statistics
As of now, Circle supports USDC across eight blockchain ecosystems namely Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, TRON, Algorand, Hedera, Flow and Stellar
Every digital dollar of USDC on the Internet is fully backed by cash and short-dated US Treasury bonds, meaning it can be redeemed 1:1 for US dollars.
According to Circle’s official websiteAlmost $49 billion worth of USDC is currently in circulation. Data from Etherscan revealed that there are 1.5 million holders of USDC, with Maker on top with 3.3 billion USDC.
As of September 23, USDC had on-chain transactions totaling 6.23 trillion, while maintaining a presence in more than 190 countries.
In accordance data from CoinMarketCap, USDC’s current market cap is $48.8 billion. USDC worth $4.4 billion was traded in the last 24 hours.
