Stablecoin Supply Doubles to 12 billion Following a 50% Cryptocurrency Market Price Drop

The total supply of stablecoins in existence has doubled to 12 billion, following an increased demand sparked off by the March 12 (Black Thursday) 50% crypto price crash.

The findings from the latest research study by Coin Metrics, which is sponsored by Bitstamp, show that it took a period between March 12 and the first half of July to add 6 billion stablecoins.

Before this addition, it had taken five years for global supply to reach the initial 6 billion.

The report comments that the March 12th event was spurred by a massive sell-off in the global equity markets as fear over Covid-19 suddenly set in.

Uncertain about the future, global investors rushed to move out equity and crypto markets, sparking a global shortage of dollars.

For crypto-asset holders that could not cash out, stablecoins proved a sanctuary hence the spiked demand, the report explains.

“Moving into stablecoins allows investors to effectively keep money parked on the sideline without having to completely cash out into fiat currency and incurring fees. This rush to safety likely accounted for a significant portion of the increased stablecoin demand following March 12th.”

The data from the study seemingly agrees with Coin Metrics’ conclusions.

The data appears to show that within two weeks of the crash, “over 800 million new USDT_ETH were issued.” This contrasts with “about 740 million USDT_ETH (that) were issued from January 1st through March 11th.”

Supply of another stablecoin, USDT_TRX would increase by “over 2B by the end of June.”

Other stablecoins rose as well, but by no more than a few hundred million. Tether, once again, led the way by a large margin.

Furthermore, the findings also show that addresses with at least $1M worth of USDT_ETH hold about 4.35B units of the total supply.

On the other hand, addresses holding $1,000 or less are a tiny portion of the overall supply.

Data also shows that the amount of USDT_ETH held by these large addresses increased by a significant amount in late-March and April, which suggests exchanges were suddenly holding larger amounts of stablecoins.

Coin Metrics suggests that exchanges make up a large portion of the addresses​ holding $1M worth of USDT_ETH or greater.

The report adds that “this may also be due to exchanges themselves converting fiat into stablecoins like USDT_ETH.”

Stablecoins make it relatively easy to transfer money between exchanges and offer settlement functionality without needing to rely on traditional wire transfers.

In the meantime, the findings also seem to reaffirm Tether’s status as the “most extensively in crypto-asset trading.” This likely contributes to its fluctuating price.

Stablecoins are used as a quote currency in crypto-asset trading pairs far more than fiat currencies on most exchanges.

A large majority of the stablecoin trading volume and supply is dominated by tether (USDT).

Do you think the supply of stablecoins will continue to grow at the same pace going forward? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below?

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via Terence Zimwara