USDC is halfway to flipping PayPal
USDC has seen huge growth and is gaining fast on Tether, the king of the stablecoins. The co-founder and CEO of Circle, Jeremy Allaire, has made a bold prediction that the company-issued stablecoin is on track to surpass payments giant PayPal in terms of transacted dollar value.
The comments came in a tweet on Tuesday, in which Allaire alluded to the on-chain transaction volume for USD Coin (USDC) over the past year, which he reported as over half a trillion dollars. He added that this was already about half of the total payment volume for PayPal in 2020, hinting that a “flippening” could be coming soon.
As some respondents to the tweet noted, the two things are not necessarily comparable, as transactions on PayPal are used to pay for goods and services whereas USDC is primarily used on crypto exchanges for trading and speculation. But it does help put USDC’s growth spurt into perspective.
According to Statista, PayPal’s annual transaction volume was $936 billion for 2020, up 31.5% from the previous year, which saw $712 billion transacted. In the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing 39% year-on-year growth.
In comparison, the market’s dominant stablecoin Tether (USDT) had hit $600 billion in cumulative transaction volume by mid-October 2020 and reportedly topped $780 billion by the end of the year. Daily volumes began to ramp up for stablecoins in the fourth quarter of 2020 as the bull market gathered momentum.
Messari currently reports adjusted daily volumes at $2.5 billion for USDC and $9.8 billion for USDT. In terms of circulating supply, Tether is currently at a record high of 43.3 billion USDT, according to Tether’s transparency report, while USDC has 11.3 billion in circulation, having grown 1,500% since the same time last year.
Tether is currently ranked the fifth cryptocurrency overall in terms of market cap according to CoinGecko, falling back following XRP’s 23% daily pump and Binance Coin’s (BNB) all-time high today. USDC is further down the list but is still the second-largest stablecoin in terms of market cap, ranked at 14th, just below Stellar (XLM).
Top Cryptocurrencies with Price Predictions
| # | Crypto | Prediction | Accuracy | CVIX | Price | 24h | 7d | Market Cap | 7d price change | |
| 1 |  BTC |
Bitcoin predictions | 73.6% | 54 | $67 992.56 | 1.35% | 2.18% | $1 341 608 846 080 |  |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 |  ETH |
Ethereum predictions | 73.2% | 47 | $3 268.77 | 0.51% | -6.28% | $392 998 641 636 |  |
|
| 3 |  USDT |
Tether predictions | 94.4% | 1 | $1.000111 | 0.02% | -0.05% | $114 341 903 845 |  |
|
| 4 |  SOL |
Solana predictions | 66.8% | 71 | $187.15 | 5.00% | 10.88% | $86 950 076 572 |  |
|
| 5 |  BNB |
Binance Coin predictions | 78% | 42 | $587.18 | 1.64% | -0.31% | $85 685 293 473 |  |
|
| 6 |  USDC |
USD Coin predictions | 93.2% | 1 | $1.000122 | 0.01% | 0.01% | $34 147 378 826 |  |
|
| 7 |  XRP |
XRP predictions | 57.2% | 86 | $0.600376 | -0.28% | 1.62% | $33 597 543 281 |  |
|
| 8 |  DOGE |
Dogecoin predictions | 74% | 55 | $0.134249 | 3.50% | 5.97% | $19 504 454 105 |  |
|
| 9 |  TON |
Toncoin predictions | 81.2% | 29 | $6.72 | -0.41% | -8.16% | $16 914 629 714 |  |
|
| 10 |  ADA |
Cardano predictions | 76.4% | 49 | $0.416969 | 0.87% | -4.75% | $14 970 823 076 |  |
|
| 11 |  TRX |
TRON predictions | 85.6% | 18 | $0.137122 | 0.49% | 1.69% | $11 938 028 529 |  |
|
| 12 |  AVAX |
Avalanche predictions | 75.2% | 40 | $28.57 | 1.38% | 1.50% | $11 278 950 659 |  |
|
| 13 |  STETH |
Lido stETH predictions | 96% | 1 | $2 941.39 | -0.40% | -3.32% | $10 258 752 564 |  |
|
| 14 |  WTRX |
Wrapped TRON predictions | 90.8% | 1 | $0.116354 | -0.46% | 0.23% | $10 171 995 609 |  |
|
| 15 |  SHIB |
SHIBA INU predictions | 82% | 29 | $0.000017 | 2.28% | -3.53% | $10 112 019 376 |  |
