Stablecoin market hits new peak at $310.117 billion

The stablecoin market has clocked a new market cap record of $310.117 billion on Saturday, December 13.

At the time of writing, the market cap of stable cryptocurrencies is hovering around $309.911 billion, based on data obtained from DeFiLlama.

Tether’s USDT remains the largest stablecoin with a market cap of $186.242 billion and a dominance of 60.10%. Circle’s USDC is in second place with a market cap of $78.315 billion and a dominance of around 25%.

Stablecoin market continues to grow rapidly

The stablecoins sector has been growing massively. In the past 12 months, stablecoins grew by 52.1%, from $203.728 billion to $309.911 billion.

During the October market crash, stablecoins maintained a growth trend. In November 2024, the market cap of stablecoins dropped to $302.837 billion, but it bounced back to record a new peak of $310.117 billion yesterday.

In the past seven days, Tether’s USDT rose by 0.32%, adding $593.34 million to its circulation. The newly minted coins were added to multiple networks, including Tron, Solana, Arbitrum, Aptos, and Polygon.

Circle’s USDC jumped by 0.71%, adding $555.56 million worth of coins to Ethereum, Solana, Hyperliquid, Base, and BSC. Sky’s USDS, PayPal’s PYUSD, and World Liberty Financial’s USD1 minted new coins during the same timeframe.

Beyond the top ten coins, Tron’s USDD rose by 23.46%, while crvUSD jumped by 28.92%. Overall, the stablecoins sector gained 0.57%, with a total addition of $1.79 billion.

But not all stablecoins were in the green. BlackRock’s BUIDL dropped by 13.24%, and its market cap is standing at $1.321 billion.

Yield-bearing stablecoins keep declining

Ethena’s stablecoins stayed in the red. USDe dropped by 2.98% this week, and USDtb posted a sharper 18.99% drop. USDe has a market cap of $6.525 billion, while USDtb sits at about $850.8 million.

Most yield-bearing stablecoins, like Ethena’s USDe, became unattractive to investors, especially after the October crypto crash. The negative trend over such coins began after USDe lost its peg to the U.S. dollar, as reported by Cryptopolitan.

According to data obtained from StableWatch, the market cap of yield-bearing stablecoins has declined by 1.9% in the last 30 days. Redemptions have exceeded the minting of new coins. Over the past week, alUSD tanked by 80.5%, smsUSD dropped 68.1%, and sBOLD slipped 13.6%.

As of press time, there is around $19.86 billion in the yield-bearing stablecoin sector spread across 64 coins. The growth of the stablecoin market sector is mainly driven by payment stablecoins, or non-yield-bearing stablecoins.

According to an exclusive report published by Fortune, YouTube started letting content creators receive their payouts in PayPal USD (PYUSD).

May Zabaneh, PayPal’s head of crypto, confirmed the news to Fortune. She added that the feature is live, but it is only available for U.S.-based content creators. A Google spokesperson confirmed the addition of the feature as well.

Google has experimented with stablecoins in the past. An executive from the tech giant said that Google received payments from two customers in PYUSD.

PayPal is leveraging its status as a fintech giant to spread PYUSD and drive more adoption. A few months ago, PayPal introduced an option that allows recipients to receive their payments in PYUSD.

PayPal USD rose by 13.33% in the last 30 days, and its market cap stands at $3.863 billion. The stablecoin is the sixth biggest coin among other payment-focused stablecoins.