By
Bhushan Akolkar
June 27th, 2024
The spike in the volume can be partly attributed to the increase in demand for stablecoin in a period when the crypto market is experiencing a downturn.
An on-chain data released by Lookonchain revealed that the 24-hour trading volume of Tether (USDT) on the Tron network has reached up to $53.031 billion, increasing by 10% in the last 24 hours, overtaking Visa’s average daily trading volume. This record by Tron is notable, as Visa is one of the world’s largest payment processing companies, handling billions of transactions across more than 200 countries and regions.
USDT Tops Visa’s Daily Transactions
The value of Tron USDT has grown quickly, as the number of holders is now over 45 million, with the number of times it has been transferred rising to more than 1.8 billion. The spike in the volume can be partly attributed to the increase in demand for stablecoin in a period when the crypto market is experiencing a downturn.
Tron, a blockchain project developed for building decentralized applications, has also experienced a rise in its total value locked (TVL) as it increased to more than $8.1 billion, making it the second blockchain network, only behind Ethereum, the first on the ladder. The Tron ecosystem has also generated over $730 million in revenue so far this year, second only to Ethereum’s $1.6 billion.
Visa has long established itself as a go payment processor. However, the continuous growth of USDT and other stablecoins could pose a potential challenge. Thus, for a chance to compete with these fast-rising solutions, Visa may need to launch its own blockchain-based system and stablecoin.
Stablecoins Outpacing Traditional Payment Networks
In data released by Nansen, an on-chain analytics firm, in April, it was revealed that the top three crypto largest stablecoins, Tether, USDC, and DAI, have experienced higher trading volumes than Visa. The analysis which was conducted around March showed that the monthly volume around that period surpassed that of the payment company’s in 2023.
The on-chain firm further revealed that Tether processed $654 billion around that same period, while DAI had $394 billion and USDC saw $321 billion. Thus, the total of these three was $1.369 trillion, while Visa, on the other hand, was $1.23 trillion in 2023. Also, in the data released, Tether had almost the same monthly volume as Mastercard, the second-largest card provider. According to Nansen, the average monthly volume of Mastercard was 750 billion in 2023, which was, in total, $9 trillion by the end of 2023. Not only that, Tether also surpassed PayPal, which was gaining $125 billion each month in the same year.
This achievement by USDT in surpassing Visa’s transaction volume shows the growing adoption and influence of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins in the global financial ecosystem. Thus, with the current clampdown on the crypto market, it is very likely to see more of an increase in the transaction volume of stablecoins as many crypto traders will want to keep their assets in them.