Key Notes
- Four major USDC mint events totaling $588.42 million occurred between August 11-12, boosting market cap to $65.85 billion.
- Ethereum ETFs attracted $1.03 billion in net inflows compared to Bitcoin ETFs' $189.72 million, indicating altcoin preference.
- Bitcoin dominance drops below 60% while total crypto market cap approaches $4 trillion with altcoins exceeding $1.6 trillion.
Circle has minted over half a billion dollars in USDC in the last 24 hours as of this writing as the cryptocurrency market has turned green together with a new all-time high from the S&P 500, starting what could be an altseason .
Data shared by Stablecoin Printer—an X account dedicated to on-chain analytics on minted stablecoins—on August 12 reported four significant mint activities for USDC in less than 24 hours. Together, they sum up to more than $588.42 million, increasing USDC’s market cap to $65.85 billion, which is likely to flow into the altcoin market.
First, Circle printed $138.67 million on August 11 at 6:15 p.m. (UTC). Exactly one hour later, the largest mint occurred, adding $173.06 million of USDC to the market. The next two mints happened on August 12, with a 1.5-hour interval between each, printing $152.42 million and $124.27 million .
Four Posts of $588M USDC Minted in 24 Hours | Source: Stablecoin Printer
Circle’s USDC has significantly larger demand for on-chain activities and DeFi operations, benefiting altcoins and their ecosystems more than Bitcoin, which gets more traction from Tether’s USDT. Chains like Ethereum, Solana, Sui, Avalanche, and Near are usually highly impacted by USDC, while BTC, XRP, BNB, Tron, and centralized exchanges are more impacted by Circle’s competitor.
New USDC tokens are minted when there is significant USD inflow via Circle, being a well-accepted metric to measure the world’s interest in the crypto space in general.
Altseason Starts for Wall Street With ETF Data
Interestingly, we have seen signals of a starting altseason also coming from Wall Street, with much higher inflow to ETH ETFs than to BTC ETFs.
According to Lookonchain data, Ethereum ETFs saw a positive net flow of 231,717 ETH, equivalent to $1.03 billion on August 11 . Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETFs had an inflow of 1,586 BTC , worth $189.72 million.
This suggests a higher preference for Ethereum, which usually happens at the start of a market event called altseason. An altseason happens when, over a period of time, other cryptocurrencies significantly outperform the leader, sending Bitcoin’s dominance down. Dominance is currently floating below 60% according to TradingView’s BTC.D index.
Bitcoin Dominance Index (BTC.D) | Source: TradingView
Notably, the United States stock market is also moving in a bullish direction, following US CPI data released earlier today. With that, the S&P 500 has reached a new all-time high of 6,438.14 points. The cryptocurrency market nears $4 trillion in capitalization, while altcoins go above $1.6 trillion of total market cap, according to TradingView’s CRYPTOCAP indexes.
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