The crypto market is witnessing a exceptional resurgence of USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization. In response to Kaiko market data, USDC’s CEX quantity market share has greater than doubled since January 2022.
USDC CEX Market Share Rises 2X
This growth is noteworthy contemplating the depressed USDC exercise within the first half of 2023 following the continuation of the crypto bear market. The restoration additionally follows elementary adjustments in Binance, the world’s largest crypto alternate, that noticed the platform delist USDC of their bid to pay attention liquidity and enhance market share for the now-delisted BUSD.
Whereas the choice to finish help for USDC on Binance noticed USDT’s market share skyrocket, Jeremy Allaire, at the moment, said the transfer by Binance was bullish for USDC. The Circle CEO stated the delisting from Binance would additionally “likely lead to more USDC flowing to Binance.”
Lower than a 12 months later, in late 2023, Binance reinstated the stablecoin on its platform. The relisting and Binance’s in depth person base and liquidity have considerably boosted USDC’s market share in CEXes, taking a look at traits up to now few buying and selling months.
From Kaiko’s information, USDC buying and selling exercise, gauging by quantity, picked momentum from late Q3 2023. Notably, this coincided with market restoration as main crypto property, primarily Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, started their transfer up. Swelling USDC and stablecoin exercise additionally coincides with decentralized finance (DeFi) exercise restoration, whose buying and selling quantity now exceeds $56 billion, in accordance with DeFiLlama data.
Solana Adoption Driving Progress?
Past Binance’s relisting, USDC’s progress can be fueled by its growing adoption of Solana, a high-performance blockchain community.
In early January 2024, Artemis data revealed that Solana-based USDC transaction quantity surpassed USDT’s on Tron. This transfer represented a seismic shift within the stablecoin panorama.
Extra importantly, that is contemplating that Tron, the low-fee and high-throughput platform, is primarily stablecoin-driven, powering a substantial proportion of USDT transfers.
USDT and USDC dominate stablecoin buying and selling, taking a look at buying and selling quantity throughout CEX and decentralized exchanges (DEXes) like Uniswap. Whereas USDT and the algorithmic stablecoin, DAI, could command a major market share in Ethereum-based protocols, USDC is the popular stablecoin in Solana.
Referencing Artemis information, there was extra on-chain exercise associated to USDC over the previous three months, particularly on Solana. This heightened exercise has seen USDC flip USDT as buying and selling quantity is up greater than 11X up to now three months alone. Whereas USDT exercise in Tron comes second, there’s additionally a spike in USDC buying and selling in Ethereum.
Characteristic picture from Canva, chart from TradingView
