Circle Internet Financial Ltd, a leading global financial technology firm, and Genesis, a leading digital asset prime brokerage firm, have formed a strategic partnership to accelerate the adoption and acceptance of digital dollar stablecoins in mainstream finance. The partnership includes a $25 million investment of capital into Circle from Digital Currency Group (DCG), the parent company of Genesis, as well as joint product efforts aimed at enhancing Circle’s new suite of products for businesses and developers with new USD Coin (USDC) yield and lending services.
Momentum and growth for digital dollar stablecoins in 2020 has been enormous, with US dollar stablecoins growing to over 12 billion in circulation, and on-chain transactions from stablecoins now representing the largest category of usage and transactions on blockchains. Recent market forecasts from research firm Messari estimate that on-chain stablecoin transactions are on track to approach $600 billion in volume this year. For perspective, in 2019 total payment volume on PayPal was $712 billion.
USDC in particular has experienced tremendous growth, decisively becoming the fastest growing and most widely adopted fully-reserved and compliant digital dollar stablecoin. USDC in circulation has grown from just over 400 million in early 2020 to over 1.1 billion today. USDC adoption has expanded across trading, payments, savings, lending and other use cases in blockchain finance. Today, hundreds of companies in the blockchain ecosystem have integrated support for USDC in their products and services.
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On the back of this growth, Circle launched its new Circle Business Account and Circle API products in Q2 2020. These new services provide businesses, fintechs and other financial institutions with a comprehensive suite of accounts and APIs for integrating and implementing USDC for payments, commerce and financial applications. Customers adopting these services span a broad array of industries and use cases including e-commerce, on-demand delivery marketplaces, digital gaming, internet services, P2P digital wallets, exchanges, B2B payments, neobanks, trade finance and digital asset lending and yield products.
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