USDC Beats USDT in Stablecoin Transactions

In a surprising development, Circle’s USD Coin has surpassed the world’s leading stablecoin, Tether’s USDT, in terms of stablecoin transactions.

According to Visa’s on-chain analytics, USDC recorded 166.6 million transactions in April 2024, eclipsing USDT’s 163.6 million transactions for the same month.

Since the end of 2020, USDC has been progressively capturing a larger share of the stablecoin transaction market.

Visa reports that in December 2023, USDC’s transaction count of 145 million overtook USDT’s 127 million transactions for the first time.

This shift has caught many industry insiders off guard, especially given Tether’s dominance as the largest stablecoin globally, with a market cap exceeding $110 billion and constituting over 68% of the total stablecoin market.

Despite this, Tether’s stablecoin market value is more than triple that of Circle’s USDC, which stands at $33.5 billion, as per CoinMarketCap.

In comparison, Tether still has a significantly larger user base. In April 2024, over 34.2 million unique wallets used USDT, whereas USDC was used by just 9.57 million unique users.

Over the last 30 days, the total number of unique stablecoin users reached 27.3 million, with 21.4 million unique stablecoin sending addresses.

Visa’s analytics, which track four stablecoins including the Paxos dollar (USDP) and PayPal USD, show these currencies facilitated more than $2.3 trillion across over 352 million transactions in the recent 30 days.

Visa launched its stablecoin analytics dashboard in April to provide clear and straightforward data on four stablecoins across nine blockchains, cutting through what it calls the “noise.”

Stablecoins play a crucial role by allowing traders to swiftly enter and exit cryptocurrency positions.

They hold a total market capitalization of over $161 billion, which represents 6.63% of the total cryptocurrency market cap of $2.43 trillion, according to CoinGecko.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/circle-usdc-overtakes-tether-usdt

https://visaonchainanalytics.com/transactions

https://coinmarketcap.com/