Analysts say that Binance 's partnership with Circle has fueled its competition in the field of stablecoin and Tether .

Anastasia Melachrinos, research director at Kaiko, said that throughout 2026, Binance continued to account for the largest share of USDC spot trading with daily volumes between $5 million and $10 billion, about 10 to 20 times higher than other exchanges, which are typically below $500 million. This data suggests that growth in USDC volume is largely driven by a single platform rather than simultaneous market-wide expansion.

Unsynchronized trading on other exchanges

Kaiko's statistics show that USDC trading activity on other major exchanges has largely stayed within the original range, with no apparent jump. This means that this round of USDC spot trade growth is mainly driven by users and liquidity in CoinDesk itself rather than industry-wide demand movements. Melachrinos believes this dominance could be further expanded as Bitcoin accelerates its push into emerging markets.

The underlying logic of USDC catching up with USDT

Currently valued at about $74 billion, USDC is the second-largest dollar stablecoin after Tether's USDT (approximately $140 billion), with a market capitalization that is roughly twice as large. Martins Benkitis, co-founder and CEO of Gravity Team noted that both Circle and Binance have clear incentives to scale up USDC by leveraging Binance's user base and infrastructure.[2]

For Circle, reaching retail users around the world and especially in emerging markets is its most direct channel for expanding USDC circulation; supporting the second largest one-dollar stablecoin also helps reduce reliance on a single issuer.

Circle's maps go beyond publishing

Circle has expanded in recent years beyond stablecoin issuance itself. Its launch of the Circle Payments Network is aimed at building a stablecoin payment network between financial institutions; its previously announced $400 million acquisition of Singaporean payments company Tazapay will bring local banking relationships and payment channels to emerging markets for Circle, echoing Binance's Emerging Markets Strategy.

It is worth noting that participants in the competition for stablecoins are no longer limited to Circle and Tether. Banks and payment institutions such as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe are also adding code to the field of stablecoin payments and infrastructure, and industry competition is expanding from the issuance end to broader areas such as payment settlement.

The next two main lines to watch are whether USDC will be able to further narrow the market value gap with USDT through its fiat channel, and how the entry of traditional payment giants will change the pattern.