USD Coin Treasury Mints Another $1.5M USDC

USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin backed by Coinbase and Circle, has been quickly ramping up its issuances as it expands its reserves. The open-source stablecoin project has been increasing its visibility in the past few months. Whale Alert (@whale_alert) is reporting that another 1,500,000 USDC ($1.5M) has been minted at USDC Treasury.

💵 1,500,000 #USDC (1,488,057 USD) minted at USDC Treasury

Tx: https://t.co/QYxLGxlkIe

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) December 16, 2019

The new batch of USDC comes after an uptick in activity for the open-source stablecoin. As BeInCrypto reported, the USDC Treasury minted another $2.8M worth of USDC last week. Earlier this month, around $19M of USDC was also moved from its treasury to an unknown wallet. The total fee for the multi-million dollar transfer was just $0.08 on the Ethereum network. The uptick in USDC issuances may indicate that the stablecoin is attempting to better position itself against Tether (USDT) in preparation for 2020. USD Coin is currently the second-largest stablecoin in the entire cryptocurrency market. Its circulating supply rose by 50 percent this year, as BeInCrypto has reported. USDC has also been attempting to entice users to hold its stablecoin with the ability to earn interest as well. In early October, the project announced that users could earn 1.25 percent yearly interest by holding USDC in their Coinbase wallet. USDC funds are still not ensured by the FDIC, however, and therefore cannot be considered a traditional savings account. Coinbase has promised it will not be using the deposited USDC funds in any way. Currently, USD Coin has a market capitalization of $468M with a current daily volume of around $258M. Although impressive for a stablecoin, it still has to catch up to do if it wishes to someday usurp Tether’s top position in the market. The leading stablecoin currently boasts a market capitalization of $4.1B and a daily trading volume of $19.8B, at the time of writing.