From their inception, the coins or tokens pegged to the US Dollar, commonly referred to as stablecoins, provided a way for many users to exit positions without exiting crypto. One could make the case that the popularity of tokenized dollars in crypto was a necessary precursor to the DeFi ecosystem we know today. Their liquidity and relative stability enabled new possibilities for smart contracts which ultimately led to the rapid maturity in decentralized financial instruments built on-chain.
And so we’re happy to unveil our new Cryptodollars page dedicated to measuring the amount of tokenized dollars in DeFi. At the time of writing, the total value locked in cryptodollars exceeds $34.5B. This new addition to DeFi Pulse helps to capture the full picture of the extraordinary growth of DeFi with years of historical data.
At launch, the following cryptodollars will be included: USDT, USDC, DAI, BUSD, PAX, HUSD, TUSD, sUSD, GUSD, MUSD, and DUSD.
How do we define each type of cryptodollar?
- Custodial – a USD token backed by USD held in custody by a third party
- Collateralized – a token pegged to USD backed by another asset or basket of assets
We’d also like to take a moment to acknowledge algorithmic stablecoin communities and the innovations happening in that sector. We will continue to monitor the evolution of the different “Algorithmic dollars” and we’ll be happy to add this category in the future should they start maintaining the peg (or reasonably close enough) with the US dollar.
Special thanks to all the teams for working with us! Be sure to check out the new Cryptodollars page. And if you’re interested in joining the DeFi Pulse Leaderboard, please check out this step-by-step guide.