Stablecoin demand and issuance have surged in 2020, underlying a shift in the industry and potential hedges against fiat. Ethereum is the industry standard for these assets and growth has been monumental.
The Ethereum network currently supports over US$9 billion [AU$14.2 billion] in stablecoins, according to researcher Ryan Sean Adams.
This monumental feat has been achieved in just three years or so, which solidifies Ethereum’s role as the foundation of a new financial ecosystem.
In Feb 2016 the reserve asset of Ethereum traded at $2
If I told you then that 4 yrs later this network would host over $9b in stablecoins & that's just one of its promising use cases you have been blown away
You would have backed up the truck
That's how I feel about ETH today pic.twitter.com/pjnhy2zfBl
— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS – rsa.eth 🦄 (@RyanSAdams) April 21, 2020
Even though ETH prices today are relatively low at just $170, they have surged since its launch in 2015.
The network itself is growing in strength and use cases, which can only be bullish for the longer term, especially when it switches to proof-of-stake and can scale better.
Tether has been the dominant stablecoin for some time now, and over $5 billion is based on the ERC-20 protocol, according to Etherscan.
The Tether Treasury has been working overtime in recent weeks, spewing out millions of more tokens every few days.
Tether’s market capitalization currently stands at almost $6.4 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. USDT market cap is now just $2 billion behind XRP and over that amount ahead of Bitcoin Cash.
As stablecoin demand grows, Ethereum will continue to be the standard for them, and things could still be just at the beginning, considering the network is barely five years old.
Featured image courtesy of elifxlite/Pixabay