Stablecoins Are Now Crypto’s Default Currency

CoinGecko shared an interesting infographic today showing that 68.1% of trading pairs on major exchanges are now quoted against stablecoins. And 97.7% of that volume is concentrated in USDT and USDC. These two have effectively become the primary settlement layer of the modern crypto market.

It wasn’t always this way. Before 2018, the role of a common denominator was played by the traditional U.S. dollar - but it was far too cumbersome for frequent transfers compared to crypto. So around 2018, Bitcoin took over as the main intermediary asset. If you wanted to swap ETH for TRX back then, you typically had to go through BTC first: ETH -> BTC -> TRX.

Even stablecoins that made it onto exchanges were traded against Bitcoin rather than the other way around.

• On Bitfinex, the DAI/BTC pair (not BTC/DAI) was introduced in April 2018.
• On Bittrex, USDS/BTC trading started in December 2018.
• On Exmo, both DAI/BTC and GUSD/BTC pairs launched around the same time.

Relics of that era still exist today: like the USDC/BTC pair on Upbit. In this market, traders buy and sell USD Coin, while prices are quoted in Bitcoin.

But that’s now the exception, not the rule. CoinGecko’s data reflects the current reality: stablecoins have long since taken over both as a unit of account and as the dominant settlement asset. If you want to swap one cryptocurrency for another on most exchanges, you’ll almost always have to route through a stablecoin.

On rabbit.io, you don’t. You can swap any cryptocurrency for another directly. No extra steps, just fast exchanges, and best rates.