Avalanche Jumps 17% After Integration With USDC Stablecoin

Avalanche (AVAX) saw a bump in price after internet finance firm Circle announced it was launching native support for its USDC stablecoin on the smart contract platform.

USDC is the second most widely used stablecoin in the world after Tether (USDT), boasting a market cap of over $41.8 billion.

AVAX rallied as much as 18% following the news, and is now 13% up in the last 24 hours at the time of writing.

According to a press release, the integration aims to create more seamless transaction and payment options within the Avalanche ecosystem. Customers will now be able deposit, withdraw, send and receive payments, as well settle transactions on Avalanche using USDC.

Circle also touted Avalanche’s energy efficiency and its Ethereum compatibility:

“Avalanche was recently recognized as a net-zero carbon output blockchain at the United Nations (UN) COP26 conference, heralding a radical new era of eco-friendly, sustainable, net-zero digital transactions. Avalanche is compatible with Ethereum smart contracts and tooling, enabling Ethereum users and developers to quickly access and launch high-performance decentralized apps.”

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John Wu, president of Ava Labs, said that “Physical fiat currency is increasingly becoming a relic of the past,” a trend that he says has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"A fundamental restructuring of legacy payments and financial infrastructure is not only warranted, but overdue. Together, Avalanche and Circle will pioneer solutions to these systemic challenges."

According to Defillama, Avalanche has the fifth most total value locked (TVL) ($10.8 billion) out of any blockchain, closely on the heels of Solana (SOL) ($11.25 billion) and Terra (LUNA) ($12.2 billion).

In June, Circle hinted that USDC would begin expanding to other blockchains. In a blog post, the firm said was expecting to bring USDC compatibility to Avalanche, Celo, Flow, Hedera (HBAR), Kava, Nervos (CKB), Polkadot (DOT), Stacks (STX), Tezos (XTZ), and Tron (TRX).

Originally, USDC was launched on Ethereum and was fully implemented on the Algorand (ALGO), Stellar and Solana chains in late 2020.