Coinbase Looking Outside the US To Grow USDC Stablecoin

Coinbase has announced commission-free trading for those who buy USDC with non-USD fiat currency in a bid to increase its use outside the United States.

San Francisco-based exchange Coinbase is building on-ramps for USDC access outside the United States in a bid to “increase economic freedom in the world.” The exchange wants to reduce barriers to using the stablecoin by establishing global parity for all users — meaning that Coinbase will remove commission fees when customers buy or sell USDC via any non-USD fiat currency on Coinbase.

This will help expand the presence of UDSC, which is already a strong stablecoin in the market. Coinbase notes that three times as much as USDC is bought with the dollar as opposed to other fiat currencies. The fees involved were usually what was stopping it from being used more often.

Coinbase has been working hard to establish a more global presence as it competes with the likes of Binance. The exchange recently secured a crypto license in Singapore, one of many that have received one which would allow them to operate in the country.

USDC has quickly become a strong stablecoin in the market and is now competing with UDST. The CEO of its issuer, Circle, has also said that the stablecoin is in its strongest financial position ever.

Stablecoin demand remains strong

Stablecoins continue to see strong demand in the market, while many other assets are experiencing lower demand. Blockworks’ stablecoin dominance statistics show 16% dominance levels — not far from the 18% all-time high set in June 2022.

Investors normally use stablecoins to move in and out of the market during volatile periods. Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino told TechCrunch,

“Stablecoins have been growing independently of market cycles simply because of their ability to improve financial inclusion. Stablecoins are also created based on market supply and demand, so when some crypto prices fall, traders may see this as a buying opportunity to use stablecoin to move in and out of positions.”

Tether’s USDT is the market’s most used stablecoin and has a market cap of $68.4 billion. USDC is behind it with a market cap of $43.9 billion. Tether is available on such networks as Algorand, Avalanche, Ethereum, EOS, Polygon, Tezos, Tron, and Solana, among others.

The USDC stablecoin itself has been seeing technical developments, such as its recent expansion to include five more networks, including layer-2 ecosystems Arbitrum and Optimism. Companies are also bringing USDC closer to Web3’s social media applications.

Coinbase backs Grayscale in SEC lawsuit

Coinbase, meanwhile, has been making various kinds of efforts to expand its business. From integrating a political crypto scorecard to launching a node stack for Web3 developers, the exchange has been putting its fingers in many pies.

It also recently showed support for Grayscale in the latter’s legal battle with the United States SEC. Grayscale is suing the SEC for its rejections of spot market bitcoin ETF applications.