Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, has predicted that stablecoins will grow to capture up to 10% of the money supply in the next 10 years. Allaire highlighted that even with the recent expansion of stablecoins, it is still in the early stages of this crypto class.
Circle CEO States Stablecoins Will Become a $10 Trillion Crypto Class
Stablecoins will grow to become a relevant part of the global financial system. This is the opinion of Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, a financial services company behind the issuance of USDC, the second-largest stablecoin in the crypto market.
In a recent interview, Allaire referred to the future of the stablecoin ecosystem and its evolution. He explained he believed stablecoins would capture between 5% and 10% of a 100 trillion money supply in 10 years as this technology expands as others have.
This would give stablecoins an upper market cap of $10 trillion, a very optimistic prediction given that the current stablecoin market cap only reaches $170 billion. USDC has a market cap of $35 billion, second to Tether’s USDT, which commands a market cap of over $120 billion.
Nonetheless, more actors have started to join the stablecoin market, including Ripple, Paypal, and Bitgo, which want to find a niche in this market focused on international payments. Circle is also betting on this expansion, having recently been reintroduced by Stripe as payment currency with the acquisition of Bridge.
Read more: Stripe Acquires Stablecoin Platform Bridge in Record $1.1 Billion Crypto Deal
For Allaire, this is very relevant, given that these companies might build their ecosystem without authorization from the issuer. “There’s a new company every week that uses USDC, and they don’t even have to do any deals with us to build and use Circle’s products. The beauty of what we’ve built is that it’s an open, public infrastructure for digital dollars on the internet,” he stressed.
Even with all the buzz surrounding stablecoins, some still doubt the allure of stablecoins in existing markets that already provide solid payment options. BVNK co-founder Chris Harmse told American Banker that there was no justification for the rise of all these stablecoin options for domestic payments.
He assessed:
You don’t really need stablecoins in the U.S. or U.K. Payments work, and people trust that. Stablecoins get interesting in emerging markets, where there is a lack of trust in economic policies or local currencies.
Writers’ take: Stablecoin popularity is higher in emerging markets, when access to dollars is not directly open, or bureaucratic procedures make it difficult for citizens to purchase them. Allaire’s prediction bets that these markets will grow and that these will maintain these restrictions, incentivizing the usage of these tools.
