PayPal’s Stablecoin Grows by Over 70% in 30 Days

PayPal is making inroads in decentralized finance (DeFi).

The payments giant released PYUSD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin last August and after a tepid start, the asset has grown to a market capitalization of $290M. Over $122M of that growth happened in the past month as PYUSD supply grew by over 70% in the last 30 days.

PYUSD is now the twelfth largest stablecoin in crypto, according to CoinGecko.

The stablecoin is starting to establish footholds in DeFi — a pool combining PYUSD and the stablecoin FRAX has grown to $134M, making it the fourth largest on Curve Finance, an automated market-maker focusing on stablecoins.

The pool allows traders to swap FRAX for PYUSD and vice versa, providing an avenue for DeFi users who want to buy PayPal’s stablecoin. PYUSD is issued by Paxos.

Curve Incentives

Sam Kazemian, the founder of Frax Finance, told The Defiant that extra incentives like CRV distributed through Curve’s gauge system, will start today, on Jan. 10.

“The goal is to make FRAX-PYUSD a new base pool and FRAX and PYUSD the gold standard,” Kazemian said. The founder also said he aims to get FRAX into PayPal’s mobile application.

PYUSD’s growth marks a distinct action by an internet native financial company into blockchain-based finance. If the stablecoin generates revenue for the company, it may inspire other financial companies to join the space.

PYUSD-USDC Pool

Elsewhere on Curve, there’s a second pool for PYUSD, with PayPal’s stablecoin paired with USDC, which at a $25.2B market capitalization is the second-largest stablecoin. The PYUSD-USDC pool currently has $14M in value locked with no volume.

StakeDAO, a project focused on providing liquid versions of vote-locked tokens, said on X that PayPal deposited $132,000 to incentivize liquidity on the PYUSD-USDC pool.

StakeDAO did not immediately respond to a message from The Defiant.

Looking forward, PYUSD may soon have another use case in DeFi too — a temperature check to onboard the stablecoin for use in Aave v3, the third iteration of the lending protocol, is live and will conclude on Jan. 11.

Voting is unanimously in favor with 255,000 AAVE tokens voting to onboard PYUSD as an asset to supply and borrow on the lending platform.