Jeremy Allaire: ‘USDC is halfway to flipping PayPal’

The co-founder and CEO of Circle, Jeremy Allaire, has made a bold prediction that the company-issued stablecoin is on track to surpass payments giant PayPal in terms of transacted dollar value.

The comments came in a tweet on Tuesday, in which Allaire alluded to the on-chain transaction volume for USD Coin (USDC) over the past year, which he reported as over half a trillion dollars.

He added that this was already about half of the total payment volume for PayPal in 2020, hinting that a “flippening” could be coming soon.

In the last year, there has been over half a trillion dollars in on-chain USDC transaction volume. For perspective, that's already about 50% of the total payment volume for @PayPal in 2020. Flippening coming soon.

— Jeremy Allaire (@jerallaire) April 6, 2021

As some respondents to the tweet noted, the two things are not necessarily comparable, as transactions on PayPal are used to pay for goods and services whereas USDC is primarily used on crypto exchanges for trading and speculation. But it does help put USDC’s growth spurt into perspective.

According to Statista, PayPal’s annual transaction volume was $936 billion for  2020, up 31.5% from the previous year, which saw $712 billion transacted. In the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing 39% year-on-year growth.

In comparison, the market’s dominant stablecoin Tether (USDT) had hit $600 billion in cumulative transaction volume by mid-October 2020 and reportedly topped $780 billion by the end of the year. Daily volumes began to ramp up for stablecoins in the fourth quarter of 2020 as the bull market gathered momentum.

Messari currently reports adjusted daily volumes at $2.5 billion for USDC and $9.8 billion for USDT. In terms of circulating supply, Tether is currently at a record high of 43.3 billion USDT, according to Tether’s transparency report, while USDC has 11.3 billion in circulation, having grown 1,500% since the same time last year.

Tether is currently ranked the fifth cryptocurrency overall in terms of market cap according to CoinGecko, falling back following XRP’s 23% daily pump and Binance Coin’s (BNB) all-time high today. USDC is further down the list but is still the second-largest stablecoin in terms of market cap, ranked at 14th, just below Stellar (XLM).