Author: Alex O'Donnell, CoinTelegraph; Compiled by: Five Baht, Golden Finance

Data from Blockworks Research shows that as on-chain activity picks up, Circle’s U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin USD Coin The circulating supply has risen by 80% from cyclical lows.

USDC’s circulating supply was nearly $44 billion as of January 2, nearly double its low of less than $24 billion in 2023, according to CoinGecko.

Meanwhile, as users migrate outside of Ethereum, Blockworks data analytics manager Dan Smith said in an article on the X platform on January 2 that holdings in the blockchain network The distribution in is more even.

This shift reflects increased on-chain activity and the rise of alternative layer 1 networks like Solana and Hyperliquid. Analysts expect this trend to continue, with USDC’s market cap likely to double this year.

As of January 2, approximately 65% ​​of the USDC supply is on Ethereum, 10% is on Solana, and approximately 15% Spanning Base and Arbitrum (both Ethereum layer 2) and Hyperliquid (layer 1 for low-latency transactions).

Smith said that in 2023, USDC will still be highly concentrated on Ethereum, which holds 85% of the circulating supply of stablecoins.

Grayscale said in a December research note that this change is partly due to "retail traders increasingly entering the cryptocurrency market through Solana, as the surrounding Solana-based meme coins and AI Speculation in proxy tokens intensifies ”

The total value locked on Solana surged to $1.5 billion in 2024 from about $1.5 billion in January, according to DefiLlama. Nearly $8.5 billion in the month.

After Donald Trump won the US presidential election, the market value of stablecoins increased significantly. The top three stablecoins — Tether’s USDt, USDC and Dai — have collectively grown by more than $25 billion in market capitalization, Citibank said in a December research note.

Cryptocurrency research firm Steno Research predicts that the circulating supply of USDC will more than double in 2025, reaching a high of approximately $100 billion.

Steno said: "This growth depends on a key assumption: Tether, the largest stablecoin, remains unregulated within the EU." He added:

"If this happens, we European residents are expected to increasingly adopt USDC as an alternative to Tether’s USDT. Citibank said the accelerated adoption of stablecoins is particularly beneficial for decentralized finance (DeFi) because “stablecoins are The gateway to decentralized finance.”

In December, Grayscale added several DeFi applications, including two on Solana, to its list of the top 20 tokens to watch in Q1 2025. They include Ethena, Jupiter, and Jito.