The venture capital arm of stablecoin company Circle has teamed up with crypto infrastructure provider Crossmint to extend the reach of the USDC stablecoin across various blockchain platforms, aiming to serve billions of users, including AI agents.
“By integrating Crossmint Wallets and APIs for stablecoin onramps, orchestration, and agentic payments with USDC […] we’re establishing the groundwork for a new financial era: where money transfers almost instantly, access is universal, and systems are designed for both humans and machines,” Crossmint stated on Wednesday during the announcement of the partnership with Circle Ventures.
Crossmint’s endorsement of AI agents comes amidst growing expectations that they will become Ethereum’s “largest power user,” uncovering numerous opportunities for on-chain e-commerce applications.
Members of Coinbase’s development team, Kevin Leffew and Lincoln Murr, indicated that AI agents will utilize stablecoins for a variety of purposes, from covering costs for autonomous taxis to publishing content on demand and automatically using stablecoins for permanent data storage.
Stablecoin rails provide lifelines in inflation-stricken nations
In parallel, individuals in unstable, high-inflation countries are increasingly opting for stablecoins to protect their wealth. In Argentina, for instance, many are using “crypto caves” to purchase US dollar stablecoins to circumvent rigorous currency controls and rampant inflation.
Recently, MoneyGram declared that its crypto payments application — which utilizes Crossmint’s infrastructure and self-custody solution — would debut in Colombia, offering locals a new method to acquire and store USDC (USDC) as a substitute for the declining Colombian peso.
Related: Circle and OKX introduce zero-fee USDC conversions to US dollar
MoneyGram already caters to over 50 million customers in more than 190 countries, thus widening the access for users to rely on Crossmint’s technology for saving in stablecoins.
USDT continues to dominate stablecoin transactions
Despite the partnerships utilizing Circle’s USDC, Tether (USDT) remains the leading stablecoin. It has experienced almost $100 billion in trading volume in the past 24 hours — nearly ten times USDC’s $10.3 billion, according to CoinGecko data.
USDT’s market cap of $173 billion significantly exceeds USDC’s $74.1 billion.
As of June, the USDT supply on the Tron network surpassed $80 billion, with its rapid, low-cost transactions making it an optimal choice for transferring digital dollars in developing regions.
Crossmint revealed another collaboration earlier this week
Crossmint has also joined forces with the developers behind the layer-1 payments-centric blockchain Tempo on Tuesday, as part of its expanded efforts to promote stablecoin adoption.
Tempo was incubated by the payments infrastructure platform Stripe, which managed over $1.4 trillion in volume in 2024, and the crypto investment firm Paradigm.
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