Morning Minute | The Importance of Stablecoins

TylerD's Market Summary

💰 Circle Gains License To Deploy USDC in Europe

The most important use case of crypto is (arguably) the ability to send borderless payments at near instant speed.

Stablecoins like USDC and USDT have been on the rise this year and spreading globally, with Turkey notably deploying 4% of its GDP on stablecoins this year.

And it looks like they're about to spread even wider.

What Happened?

Yesterday Circle, the issuer of USDC, became the first to secure a stablecoin license under the new MiCA crypto framework.

Their compliance with this relatively new framework (launched in June 2023) allows them to issue USDC and EURC (pegged to the dollar and Euro respectively) in Europe.

Circle has also launched Circle Mint for businesses in Europe allowing minting and redeeming of stables.

Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of Circle, commented:

"Since our founding, Circle has sought to build durable, compliant, and well-regulated infrastructure for stablecoins, and our adherence to MiCA, which represents one of the most comprehensive crypto regulatory regimes in the world, is a huge milestone in bringing digital currency into mainstream scale and acceptance."

It's a big deal for crypto, stablecoins and for USDC.

Why It Matters

For USDC, it has been drastically trailing Tether (USDT) in market cap and daily volume. USDT has $112B in market cap while USDC has only $32B.

Stablecoins market caps increase when individuals or businesses "mint" stables by converting USD to USDC, and they decrease through "redeems", the act of cashing out USDC to USD.

Now, USDC is set to take full command of the European stablecoin market.

It's a win for the broader stablecoin sector as well.

We discussed this on Monday's Milk Road podcast, but there are many reasons why stablecoins matter.

They offer an inflation hedge to those in countries with inflating base currencies, there are dozens of methods to capture yield on them and usually much larger than with traditional banks, and of course fast, borderless payments.

And as stablecoins rise, the overall crypto market cap rises - and it's not farfetched to assume a portion of stablecoin inflow moves to crypto majors.

This is a very important macro trend to watch.

Kudos to Circle for getting this done and unlocking Europe.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $4.9M (+17%) on the day; SOL was next with $3.5M (-45%) and then BTC with $1.6M 
• ETH NFT leaders were led by the soaring Pudgy Penguins; Pudgy +19% to 12.25 ETH and lil Pudgy +19% to 1.08 ETH; Kanpai +14% to 1.43 ETH, Azuki +6% to 3.6 ETH and BAYC -3% to 9.82 ETH
• Sword of Grandia and GLHFers were top movers on the day, jumping 86% and 76% respectively
• BTC NFT leaders were red; NodeMonkes -7% at 0.173 BTC, Puppets -3% at 0.144 BTC, OMB even at 0.22 and Quantum Cats -1% at 0.259
• The Runes leaders were also red; DOG -6% at $590M mc and RSIC -5% at $111M mc
• Solana NFTs were red after a green weekend; Mad Lads -9% at 90 SOL, SMB Gen 2 -17% at 31, DeGods -5% at 20, Tensorians -11% at 14.5

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are mixed this morning with SOL leading; BTC -0.2% at $62,560; ETH -0.5% at $3,440, SOL +1% at $148
• Memecoin majors are mostly green with DOGE -1%, PEPE even, WIF +1%, BONK +10%; BILLY outperformed, jumping 100% on the day to $117M
• Circle announced that USDC and EURC are now both available in the EU under their new stablecoin laws
  
• The class action lawsuit against Roaring Kitty alleging securites fraud tied to GME was dismissed on Monday just hours after being filed
• Coinbase Prime won a contract to manage and facilitate the U.S. Marshals crypto (storage and liquidation) aiming to streamline management processes tied to government forfeiture programs
• Silvergate faces a new lawsuit from the SEC accusing them of misleadin the public and failing to appropriately monitor $1T worth of transactions tied to FTX

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $BILLY (+100%, $124M market cap, SOL)
• $SPIKE (+45%, $37M market cap, SOL)
• $GIGA (+34%, $62M market cap, SOL) 
• $BODEN (+31%, $42M market cap, SOL)
• $HARAMBE (+31%, $23M market cap, SOL)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Sword of Grandia (86%, 0.78 ETH Floor)
• GLHFers (76%, 0.09 ETH)
• Project AEON (63%, 0.24 ETH)
• Asterix (39%, 0.39 ETH)
• DeadFellaz (39%, 0.1 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming Mints and Events

Today is a another slow day of mints in what's likely to be a slow week.

There are a few drops across Blast, Solana, Base and ETH to check out if you're interested.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• OmniCat (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Bard Ionson - Naked Flames (12:00 p.m. ET)
• Chooky Records (12:00 p.m. ET)
• Gogonauts (12:00 p.m. ET)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.