Stablecoins have overtaken Mastercard by $5.2 trillion this year. In total, in 2022, transactions worth $7.4 trillion were made in stablecoins, and $2.2 trillion in the Mastercard payment system, reports The Defiant.
In two years, the volume of transactions with stablecoins grew by more than 600% — in 2020, there were $1 trillion in stablecoin transactions, according to the analytical platform CoinMetrics. In 2021, by $6 trillion. The volume of trading in other leading crypto-assets decreased by more than 90%.
Despite the turmoil in the crypto market this year and the general downward trend in trading volume for most of the leading crypto assets, stablecoins have outperformed every major payment card company except Visa (NYSE:V) in terms of settlement volume.
This type of asset has surpassed not only Mastercard, but American Express (NYSE:AXP) with $1 trillion and Discover with $200 billion, according to Brevan Howard Digital CEO and former Jump Crypto employee Peter Johnson. The volume of transactions in the Visa payment system amounted to $12 trillion.
Stablecoins occupy about 18% of the total cryptocurrency market. Data from analytics platform CoinMetrics shows that the cumulative trading volume of the seven stablecoins (excluding USDT and USDC) tracked by CoinMetrics is up about 30% from $1 trillion in 2021.
The volume of transactions with the leading stablecoin Tether (USDT) decreased from $3.7 trillion to $3.5 trillion over the year. And its main competitor, USD Coin (USDC), showed a result twice as large as in 2021 — $ 2.9 trillion.
The rivalry between the two leading stablecoins is only getting stronger. In early December, crypto exchange Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) called on its clients to transfer assets from USDT to USDC. The platform stated that the events of the fall put some stablecoins to the test, and USDC is one of the most reliable and authoritative digital dollars, writes RBC.
