In April, stablecoins broke with the general market downturn and went on a seven-month run of gains.
According to the CCData research, the industry grew by 4.76%, increasing its market capitalization to $158 billion. Stablecoins have gained $27.1 billion year-to-date (YTD).
Stablecoin market domination increased to 6.30% from 5.43% in March as a result of this tremendous rise. The research stated that the rise during the general market decline was unprecedented;
"This marked the first rise in the dominance of stablecoins as markets pulled back in April as a result of US inflation data that was higher than expected and an increase in geopolitical tensions last month."
It's interesting to note that the USDC of US-based Tether and the FDUSD of Hong Kong-based First Digital Labs lead April's growth.
Market share is dominated by USDT and FDUSDT
Tether's market capitalization climbed by 5.58% to $110 billion, a new high for the cryptocurrency, bolstering its 70% market dominance.
FDUSD, on the other hand, stood out among stablecoins denominated in USD. According to the research, as of April 24th, its market worth had surged by 77.6% to $3.88 billion.
The substantial monthly increase in FDUSD was validated by DeFiLlama data. The FDUSD market cap surged to $4 billion at the time of writing, a staggering 79.4% monthly rise.
Ethena's USDe also achieved remarkable success, rising more than 74% to reach $2.36 billion and ranking in the top five globally according to market capitalization.
Circle's USDC, though, was left out of the fun. By 3.97%, its market share dropped to $30.7 billion. The paper emphasized how unusual the slowing of USDC in April was.
"For the first time in five months, USD Coin's (USDC) market capitalization decreased."
Regarding trading volume, among CEXs (centralized exchanges), USDT was the most favored stablecoin.
In March, the volume of stablecoin traded on CEXs than doubled (a 98.9% increase), reaching $2.15 trillion. This occurred at a period of extreme volatility, when Bitcoin reached a new peak of $73.7K. With respect to the $2.15 trillion market, USDT held 77.5% of the share.
With a 14.6% market share, FDUSD took second place in terms of CEX volumes once more. Closely behind in third place with a 7.14% market dominance was USDC.
Moves in gold and the summer of cryptocurrency
The gold-backed duopoly of Tether Gold [XAUT] and Pax Gold [PAXG], as opposed to stablecoins priced in US dollars, traded at premiums in April.
Due to the report's correlation between Middle East tensions and Gold's recent record high, the market capitalization of the two gold-backed assets increased by more than 4%.
Amid the geopolitical concerns in the Middle East, "Tether Gold (XAUT) and Pax Gold (PAXG) rose 4.20% and 4.77% to $573mn and $425mn, respectively, as Gold surpassed its previous all-time high price."
Positively, it appears that the industry is still expanding. Stripe stated on April 25 that stablecoins would be the first worldwide cryptocurrency payments to resume this summer.
Stablecoins may see further growth if foreign markets accept cryptocurrency payments in large quantities.
April 2024, Cryptoniteuae