The world’s leading stablecoin backed by Circle and Coinbase, USD Coin [USDC] went live on Stellar’s decentralized exchange, on the 2nd of February. David Puth, the CEO of Centre Consortium, asserted that the partnership of Stellar and Centre would further advance the growth of USDC while strengthening the Stellar ecosystem at the same time.
According to the official announcement, at launch, the Stellar USDC was available on Stellar’s decentralized exchange, accessible to any Stellar account through integrated wallets and tradeable across Stellar’s ecosystem of over 9,000 assets which includes stablecoins such as NGNT, BRLT, ARST, EURT, TZS and ZAR.
Notably, Stellar was previously announced as an official chain of the stablecoin back in October 2020 by Stellar Development Foundation [SDF] and the Centre Consortium, which was co-founded by Circle and Coinbase.
Following the announcement, Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation was quoted saying,
“This integration is going to be a powerhouse for growth in the Stellar ecosystem and a catalyst towards achieving our mission of creating equitable access to the global financial system. It presents significant business opportunities for both new and existing companies to build on the respective strengths of USDC and Stellar.”
Furthermore, the latest integration also aims to benefit businesses and developers from Circle’s scale and liquidity to deliver on the kinds of products and use cases the Stellar especially with respect to cross-border payments and tokenization.
Rise in Circulation of USDC Tokens
USDC was first developed on Ethereum blockchain but with the partnership, Stellar has become the fourth blockchain to support the stablecoin.
Besides, owing to the wider adoption of the cryptocurrency over the last couple of months, stablecoins in circulation have exploded at an astonishing rate. Moreover, the number of USDC tokens in circulation also saw a parabolic rise of more than ten-fold over the last 12 months. Most notably, the stablecoin gained momentum after July when prices of Bitcoin and altcoins picked up the pace.
At the time of writing, USDC’s market cap was found to be at $5.93 billion.