Circle’s Stablecoin USD Market Cap Falls Below $50 Billion

• The market capitalization of USDC dropped to $46 billion on Monday.
• Binance has converted all stablecoin holdings to its own Binance USD stablecoin.

Circle’s stablecoin USD Coin has lost all of its early 2022 gains after a 7-week rise in May and June brought its market value beyond $56 billion, an all-time high. The market capitalization of USDC dropped to $46 billion on Monday, the lowest level since January.

Binance’s latest attempt to “enhance liquidity and capital-efficiency” has been detrimental to USDC. At the beginning of September, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of trading volume announced that it will begin automatically converting USDC, Pax Dollar, and TrueUSD stablecoin holdings to its own Binance USD stablecoin. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, tweeted at the time that the move may result in “more USDC flowing into Binance.”

Binance Conversion Effect 

Still, it’s unclear whether that’s the case at this time. On September 29th, all of the automated conversions were completed. CoinGecko data states that from the beginning of September, when Binance made their statement, the market capitalization of BUSD has increased by 12% while that of USDC has decreased by 12%.

The UST algorithmic stablecoin issued by Terra lost its dollar peg and began its descent to zero earlier this year, leading to a sharp increase in demand for USDC. Investors seemingly flocked to USDC as a safe haven while Terra plummeted, wiping away $40 billion.

According to CoinGecko, the market capitalization of Circle’s stablecoin increased from $48 billion on May 9 to $56 billion on June 19.

This increase coincided with panic in Tether’s USDT, its main competitor when the stablecoin momentarily decoupled from the dollar. CoinGecko reports that this led to a decline in Tether’s market valuation from $83 billion in May and June.

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