Coinbase focuses on USDT Stablecoin Rival Tether with a ‘stretch goal’ of $ 86 billion for USDC

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on Thursday that the crypto -heavy weight is decreasing its gloves for a renewed fight in the Stablecoin ring.

During the company’s profit call in the fourth quarter, Armstrong said that the company will challenge Tether as reigning Stablecoin emittent of the industry. The ultimate goal is to make Circle’s USDC the world’s ‘Number One Dollar Stablecoin’.

Armstrong characterized this new goal as a ‘target goal’, which indicates that it represents an ambitious but possibly achievable performance, which will nevertheless push his comfort zone outside of his comfort zone.

As the second largest Stablecoin, the market capitalization of USDC $ 56 billion after last week is a record high. Yet that leaves a lot of terrain for USDC to cover while it works to catch up Connect. From this letter, USDT is currently good for a colossal 60% of the Stablecoin market for $ 142 billion market capitalization, per Coentecko.

Because Stablecoins are designed to maintain a 1: 1 PEG with another currency, market capitalization in this case in this case market capitalization is a reliable indicator for issue.

Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas contextualized the daring call from Armstrong on Thursday. “I think it is important to note that we hope to achieve this in the coming years,” she said.

The high beam for Coinbase comes after being stronger than expected The fourth quarter was characterized by $ 1.3 billion in profit. In the meantime, the Stablecoin legislation seems to be getting strength on Capitol Hill, after years of babble under legislators. ‘

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), chairman of the Senate Bank Committee, already has promised Those legislation for Stablecoins will be adopted within the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s period.

That bill, called the brilliant action, would create a route according to legality for emennin of Stablecoins supported by the US dollar. That would comprise Monthly audits About the health of the Fiat reserves that support their products, according to a concept of the bill that is seen by Decrypt.

Since legislators can ultimately adjust the Stablecoin bill before it can be passed on by both chambers of the congress and can be signed by Trump in the law, the radical stabile legislation ultimately continues to influence USDC, USDT or a Stablecoin.

Can legislation help?

Hours for the income of Coinbase, JP Morgan analysts posed That chain can be forced to change the structure of the dollar equivalent reserves that support USDT.

In his most recent certificate report, Tether said that these reserves mainly consist of cash and kasequivalents and other short -term deposits, including assets such as American treasury and money market funds, which are good for 82% of Tether’s reserves.

For years, Tether has sporadically and then regularly published certificates reports on the reserves that support the Stablecoin. But both accountants and competitors have quickly demonstrated that none of those financial statements has been checked.

Although audits try to discover risks and possible compliance problems by collecting data, certificates are usually used to verify how truthful data is.

But it is worth pointing out that Circle has never published a controlled report at the moment about the reserves that support USDC. Just like Tether, the company publishes certificates About the “very liquid Fiat reserves” that support USDC and Euroc, the Euro-Stunder Equivalent.

JP Morgan stated that Tether may have to sell a considerable amount of “non-compliant” assets in its reserve, such as Bitcoin and Every remaining commercial articleIf it wants to comply with new American rules.

A Tether spokesperson pushed back against the suggestion of JP Morgan, telling Decrypt That $ 20 billion in “other very liquid assets” was overlooked by the Wall Street Titan, along with “more than $ 1.2 billion in profit per quarter” of holding parts of government debt.

In particular, Tether can also fall outside the scope of the Stablecoin Bill; The company recently moved His company from the British Virgin Islands to El Salvador.

“If the Stablecoin regulations pass in the US, I think the USDC market share will help disproportionately,” said BitWise senior investment strategist Juan Leon Decrypt. “But will that be enough to surpass USDT?”

USDC should be the predominantly used Stablecoin on developed markets to get the chance to surpass USDT, Leon said. USDC is less likely to put the dominance of USDT in emerging markets, he added.

Former SEC chairman Gary Gensler once referred to Stablecoins as “poker chipsUsed in decentralized financing, or DefiAs a usual way for traders to easily park funds and to lock up profit. Oversights and payments represent use use in practice, while the use of stablecoins in Money laundering and punishing avoidance has also drawn controversy.

‘Speed ​​up’

Activity on chains involving Stablecoins is largely focused on networks that support smart contracts, such as Ethereum And Solana. But Armstrong said that the growth of USDC’s footprint on the Ethereum Scaling Network Base– that Coinbase itself created and launched –Is the key, together with promoting commercial partnerships.

“We think that USDC has a network effect behind it, and the conforming approach they have followed, I think, will really be defensible in the long term,” said Armstrong, referring to Circle.

“We will speed up the growth of the market capitalization of USDC with more partnerships, and lean in new use cases such as adding payment support to our product suite,” he continued.

The turnover of Stablecoin was $ 224 million in the fourth quarter of Coinbase, $ 20 million fell compared to the previous quarter and represented only 9.4% of the company’s total turnover.

In his shareholders’ letter, Coinbase USDC described as’ the fastest growing ‘major’ Stablecoin in 2024 ‘, while he points to $ 12 billion of USDC payments on the chain that facilitated the exchange.

Coinbase now uses an attacking approach to the growth of USDC. But during the Berenmarkt in 2023, when the trade volumes are left behind, the company was Saw the stabilecoin income Strengthen its subscriptions and service segment.

In fact, subscriptions and service income temporarily surpassed Transaction -Income as the most important money maker in Coinbase, a total of $ 334 million and $ 289 million in the third quarter of 2023.

In August of that year, circle said Coinbase had taken a share interest in the company. Both companies agreed to kick a “self -government consortium” to better tighten their coordination.

Circle and Tether did not immediately respond to requests for comments from Decrypt.

Published by Stacy Elliott