The number of addresses holding stablecoins has risen 15% this year.
Rating agency S&P 500 said regulatory clarity could bring banks into the stablecoin market.
Stablecoins are hotter than ever. The number of addresses holding dollar and crypto-pegged stablecoins has increased 15% this year to above 93.6 million, the highest on record, according to data source rwa.xyz.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies with values pegged to an external reference, like the U.S. dollar. They can be broadly categorized as fiat-backed, crypto-backed, or algorithmic stablecoins. As of the time of writing, there are 35 stablecoins in existence, boasting a combined market capitalization of $157 billion.
Tether (USDT) holders, with an industry-leading market cap of $114.07 billion, accounted for just over 80% of the total stablecoin addresses, followed by USDC and BUSD.
The tally of the so-called holding addresses increased even during the 2022 crypto bear market. The Fed raised interest rates rapidly in 2022, boosting investor demand for the U.S. dollar and greenback-equivalents like the dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies.
Not only that, but the number of addresses transferring stablecoins has also increased rapidly over the years. In March alone, active stablecoin addresses rose past the 26 million mark for the first time on record, per rwa.xyz.
Details show that nearly 20 million, or 77% of those addresses, were based on TRON and Binance Smart Chain (BSC), largely representing retail investor participation.
“Zooming in and looking at transfer volumes, one notices that despite the dominant active address counts, TRON and BSC are a minority of $ volumes, demonstrating their popularity amongst retail participants,” crypto analytics newsletter OurNetwork’s April 23 edition said.
OurNetwork added that Ethereum, the world’s largest smart contract blockchain, and its rival Solana accounted for a giant share of the transfer volume due to their large decentralized finance ecosystem.
Stablecoin use cases
A 2022 report by the Federal Reserve said stablecoins could be used for several purposes, including cross-border payments, internal fund transfers, and liquidity management within firms.
Moreover, a single stablecoin can serve a different purpose depending on jurisdiction. For instance, in high-inflation nations like Zimbabwe and Nigeria, stablecoins have been adopted as alternative means of payment, remittances, and stores of value assets. Meanwhile, in advanced economies, stablecoins are widely used to fund cryptocurrency purchases.
Tether LTD, the company behind USDT, recently partnered with Telegram Open Network (TON), issuing $60 million of USDT on the TON blockchain.
“This deal deploys USDT onto the blockchain of the eponymous messaging app, opening the door for native usage of Tether to the nearly billion Telegram users,” OurNetwork said.
Regulation is the key
According to rating agency S&P, regulatory clarity will likely encourage banks to adopt stablecoins. Last week, U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) introduced a joint 179-page bill on regulating stablecoins.
“Assuming the bill is approved, and that relevant banking regulation follows, the new rules may offer banks a competitive advantage by limiting institutions without a banking license to a maximum issuance of $10 billion,” S&P said.
S&P added that USDT, which is issued by a non-U.S. entity, is not a permitted payment stablecoin under the proposed bill, meaning stateside entities will not be able to hold or transact in tether. As such, tether’s dominance could wane and users will likely switch to U.S.-issued stablecoins.