Over the past few weeks, the Solana blockchain and its SOL token have seen unprecedented momentum. For once, stablecoins are leading the way, and it’s not USDT that’s in the lead, but Circle’s USDC.
2.5 billion USDC on Solana
On Friday, September 10, Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s co-founder and CEO, announced a major milestone for his stablecoin and the Solana network. Indeed, the number of USDC in circulation on the network has surpassed the 2.5 billion mark. A milestone that is all the more impressive considering that the outstanding supply was only 1 billion just a week ago.
According to his explanation, Circle decided to issue its token on Solana last year as part of a multi-chain deployment strategy. Solana was chosen because of its scalability, speed and cost effectiveness for USDC.
“Our mission and vision was to see USDC become a protocol for internet payments. Combined with third generation blockchain, USDC could become a foundation for the future of internet capital markets.”
Jeremy Allaire
USDC at the top of the podium
Despite the diversity in stablecoin solutions, Tether’s USDT has long reigned supreme across the ecosystem. With a circulating supply of nearly $70 billion across all blockchains, it hovers at the top, far ahead of USDC and its capitalization of “only” $30 billion.
However, the USDC with its 2.5 billion units is currently the most represented stablecoin on Solana. For its part, the USDT has only 1.14 billion tokens in circulation on the third generation blockchain.
Only on Ethereum does USDT remain the leader with 33 billion tokens in circulation, compared to 26 billion for Circle’s USDC.
In the face of growing concerns around the dollar reserves of the various stablecoinz, Circle recently announced that its reserves would soon consist solely of cash and U.S. Treasuries. This decision comes after pressure from U.S. regulators increased.
