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Circle to Issue Its Stablecoin USDC on Celo Network to Boost RWA Capabilities
Celo, which is in the midst of transforming into an Ethereum layer 2 network, increasingly positions itself as a blockchain for real-world assets.
Updated Mar 8, 2024, 8:42 p.m. Published Jan 30, 2024, 2:11 p.m.
Stablecoin issuer Circle expanded native issuance of its $26 billion stablecoin USDC to the Celo network, the Celo Foundations announced Tuesday in a press release.
With the development, the Celo ecosystem looks to boost cross-border payments and peer-to-peer transactions in developing regions, facilitating conversion from local currencies, the press release explained.
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CLabs, an organization dedicated to Celo ecosystem development, will also propose a community vote to enable paying transaction fees (gas) with USDC stablecoin.
The USDC expansion came as Celo increasingly vying to be an important plumbing for tokenized real-world assets (RWA) -- placing traditional investments such as bonds and credit on blockchains in a token form and use stablecoins for settlements. RWA-focused marketplace Untangled Finance and credit platform Huma expanded to the network in the past months.
"The Celo ecosystem is excited to bring more RWAs on-chain through our partnership with Circle and the launch of USDC on Celo," Isha Varshney, head of strategy and innovation at the Celo Foundation, said in a statement. "We want to be the best ecosystem for stablecoins, which has proven to be among the industry’s prevailing use cases, as institutional investors come into Web3.”
Celo is currently in the process of ditching its standalone blockchain and migrating to become an Ethereum-based layer 2 network.
Read more: Celo, Shopping for Blockchain Partner, Turns to the Delicate Issue of Money
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Exchange Review - March 2025
CoinDesk Data's monthly Exchange Review captures the key developments within the cryptocurrency exchange market. The report includes analyses that relate to exchange volumes, crypto derivatives trading, market segmentation by fees, fiat trading, and more.
What to know:
Trading activity softened in March as market uncertainty grew amid escalating tariff tensions between the U.S. and global trading partners. Centralized exchanges recorded their lowest combined trading volume since October, declining 6.24% to $6.79tn. This marked the third consecutive monthly decline across both market segments, with spot trading volume falling 14.1% to $1.98tn and derivatives trading slipping 2.56% to $4.81tn.
- Trading Volumes Decline for Third Consecutive Month: Combined spot and derivatives trading volume on centralized exchanges fell by 6.24% to $6.79tn in March 2025, reaching the lowest level since October. Both spot and derivatives markets recorded their third consecutive monthly decline, falling 14.1% and 2.56% to $1.98tn and $4.81tn respectively.
- Institutional Crypto Trading Volume on CME Falls 23.5%: In March, total derivatives trading volume on the CME exchange fell by 23.5% to $175bn, the lowest monthly volume since October 2024. CME's market share among derivatives exchanges dropped from 4.63% to 3.64%, suggesting declining institutional interest amid current macroeconomic conditions.
- Bybit Spot Market Share Slides in March: Spot trading volume on Bybit fell by 52.1% to $81.1bn in March, coinciding with decreased trading activity following the hack of the exchange's cold wallets in February. Bybit's spot market share dropped from 7.35% to 4.10%, its lowest since July 2023.
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