The amount of USD Coin (USDC) issued globally surpassed $1 billion on Monday, the first fiat token to reach that threshold in under a year and officially crowning USDC as the fastest-growing stablecoin in the world.

The $1 billion milestone comes as the amount of USDC redeemed (in other words, exchanged for US Dollars) nears $600 million and on-chain transfers reach about $16 billion. USDC’s market cap is above $430 million, and it is firmly the second-largest stablecoin in the world.

Purpose Built for Easy Issuance, Use, and Redemption

USDC was introduced in September 2018 by the CENTRE Consortium, a joint venture co-founded by Circle and Coinbase, to establish a standard for fiat on the internet because we knew an open, transparent fiat token framework is a foundational requirement to build powerful new global financial contracts, products, and services.

Several factors helped drive rapid, world-wide adoption of USDC:

CENTRE is built on a multi-issuer model — a way for traders and developers to mitigate counterparty risk by being able to go to multiple companies, rather than just one, to mint USDC or redeem it for fiat.

Support for USDC from companies has grown consistently since launch — more than 100 exchanges, protocols, platforms, applications, wallets, and service providers have integrated with USDC, making it a vibrant ecosystem.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a growing part of the crypto industry and all of the leading DeFi applications integrate with USDC.

Transparency has been a hallmark of USDC since day one giving traders, crypto enthusiasts, and others confidence that USDC is backed by US Dollars — in fact, all of our monthly attestation reports are available online here.

Expect More From USDC and CENTRE

USDC will continue to grow as CENTRE brings on new members to issue USDC and other fiat tokens.

CENTRE is officially open for business and has released key licensing, technology, operations, compliance, accounting, and custody standards companies must meet to become issuers.

Building upon the success of USDC, CENTRE intends to enable coins to function across multiple chains, including both public and private chains. It will also grow its fiat token support beyond the US dollar by introducing new currencies to its network. This effort spans the leading global reserve currencies, and includes adding new Issuers and reserve custodians for each of these currencies.

You can learn more about USDC here, and tokenize or redeem USDC with both Circle and Coinbase. You can go here to read the monthly reports on US dollar reserves backing USDC issued by independent accounting firm, Grant Thornton LLP.