$9 Billi-Gone

Stablecoins are essential to many areas in the crypto world. The total stablecoin market cap currently sits at $148.74 billion, with USDT holding 45.68% dominance and USDC coming in a close second with 30.93% dominance. It looks like lately, USDC has been burning a hole in some holders’ pockets.

• According to DeFiLlama, the total supply of USD Coin (USDC) has fallen from $55.55 billion to $46.57 billion in the last 90 days. 
• This means that Circle, the issuer of USDC, has destroyed around $9 billion worth of USDC, the highest volume burnt by Circle in any 90-day period.
• Circle burns USDC when a user redeems the coin for the underlying fiat currency. Circle achieves this by sending redeemed tokens to a burn address which permanently deletes those coins from the blockchain.
• Whilst the supply of USDC has dropped, the supply of Tether (USDT) has increased by more than $2 billion within the same 90-day period.
• Data from LoanScan suggests that the increase in USDC burn has coincided with a market-wide decline in yield offered by major DeFi platforms to stablecoin lenders.

Circle has also announced plans to further the support for USDC to strengthen a multi-chain ecosystem. The utility of stablecoins may be intuitively linked to DeFi, but their utility reaches far beyond.