The long-time held belief that stablecoins help traders and investors avoid crypto value loss due to volatility may be playing out. Many more people have continued to hold their crypto assets in stablecoins to prevent possible losses. This has made stablecoins more substantial and they have sustained a trajectory growth in total market capitalization in the last month when Bitcoin and the entire crypto prices were shaky.
The total market capitalization for stablecoins now stands at $187 billion. According to data from CoinGecko, stablecoins have together added $10 billion in market capitalization over the past 30 days. During the same period, Bitcoin lost $40 billion in market capitalization. Most of the value has been lost since mid of this month when Bitcoin volatility was not favorable for traders and investors.
On each of the top 10 crypto exchanges, there are clearly huge daily trading volumes for stablecoins paired against top cryptocurrencies. Without a doubt, these trading volumes have increased in orders of magnitude over the last month.
The greatest gainers in the stablecoin onslaught are USD Coin or USDC and Binance USD, which have added $4 billion of market capitalization each in 30 days. Tether has added just $1 billion of market cap in 30 days. The USD Coin by Coinbase is pegged against the dollar on a 1:1 ratio. It is now at $53 billion in market cap against Binance USD’s $18 billion and Tether’s $79 billion. This capitalization attests to the dominance Binance and Coinbase have in the entire crypto market, being the two largest exchanges in terms of daily trading volumes.
USD Coin’s recent massive gain in market capitalization has left people speculating that it could overthrow Tether as the top stable coin this year. Tether’s dominance has grown weaker, especially during the last year as USDC massively reduced the dominance. Binance USD, however, has also had a quick trajectory growing from $1.1 billion a year ago which means it is also catching up fast.
The continued growth of USDC and Binance USD is also partly because of the struggles Tether had in the past. Some people have doubted whether the company behind it keeps an equivalent amount of fiat reserve on a ratio of 1:1 against the total Tether tokens in supply. The company has defended itself against those claims. However, the company was last year fined a total of $41 million by CFTC in investigations.
However, the NFT market capitalization also grew stronger at 143% and 650% in the last one month and seven days respectively.