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Circle’s USDC Sees $2B Supply Increase, Driving Growth in DeFi and Global Payments
The circulation supply of USDC has increased by an additional $2 billion in the last week, as its total market capitalization stands at $72.6 billion. Staticcoin has become the seventh-largest cryptocurrency, marking growth in both decentralized finance (DeFi) and institutional payment systems.
USDC is issued by Circle and supported 1:1 with US dollars and equivalents, and is increasingly used on traditional and digital financial platforms. Large institutions adopting it recently are an indicator of a wider move towards the integration of stablecoins into finance globally. By data, the stablecoin has a trading volume of 24 hours of $12.87 billion and a 7-day record of $117.84 billion.
Institutional Partnerships Strengthen USDC’s Role in Cross-Border Payments
The collaboration between Finastra and Circle is a significant step towards integrating stablecoins. The partnership connects USDC to Finastra's global PAYplus system, which intends to digitize up to $5 trillion of cross-border daily transactions. The purpose of this integration is to reduce settlement costs and enhance transaction efficiency using stablecoin infrastructure.
Within the DeFi ecosystem, Aave has launched Horizon, which allows institutions to borrow USDC on tokenized real-world assets like US Treasuries. This new development also contributes to the utility of stablecoins within structured finance and is an indicator of the rise in confidence in blockchain-based financial models.
Also Read: Coinbase Unveils Super App ‘Base’ With USDC Payments and Mini-Apps
Regulatory Support and European Expansion Build Momentum
In Europe, USDC has been spreading via a broader collaboration between Mastercard and Circle. This effort allows settlements in the EEMEA region in both the USDC and the EURC. It is in line with greater regulatory advances within the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework that now regulates digital asset services in the bloc.
Meanwhile, the European Central Bank has proposed an equivalence framework to regulate risks associated with non-EU stablecoins. The ECB's policy is to harmonize regulations and minimize risk, but not ban integration into traditional systems.
Since the successful IPO of the Circle, the company has continued to establish the role of the USDC based on institutional partnerships and DeFi solutions. It has also earned credibility amongst the financial players due to the fixed peg to the dollar, open reserves, and the existence of the regulators. As the number of use cases of stablecoins rises, USDC is positioned in the vanguard of transitioning legacy finance to blockchain-based infrastructure.
