USDC drives a 33% jump in crypto card spending to $4.31 billion

Going from $3.24 billion in the second quarter to $4.31 billion in the third means $1.07 billion more card spending in three months ^[14]. Cryptopolitan attributes the gain to new assets on the cards and heavier use of USDT and USDC, and calls USDC the main driver ^[20][21]. Some of it came from Plasma, Tether's payment network, whose volume rose 350% ^[3].

Whether stablecoins pay for most of that spending is harder to settle. USDC card payments passed $439 million in September, more than three times USDT's ^[4]. That puts USDT's September card volume below about $146 million, and the two coins together below $585 million ^[15]. If September's pace held for all three months, USDC and USDT would account for less than $1.76 billion of the $4.31 billion, or about 41% ^[17]. September could have been a soft month. In a quarter that grew 33%, though, it is more likely to have been the strong one. The rest went through other stablecoins, such as the euro token EURR that Revolut added, or through volatile tokens ^[6]. Cryptopolitan does not split the total by asset.

Cards are also a small part of stablecoin payments. Adjusted stablecoin payment volume topped $54 billion in September ^[5]. The quarter's average month of card spending, about $1.44 billion, is roughly 2.7% of that, and USDC's September card volume is about 0.8% ^[16][18].

I think USDC's card lead comes down to who distributes it. Cryptopolitan ties the shift to MiCAR in the EU and to the US Genius Act, which is still being rolled out, and says brokerages, exchanges and other financial firms have divested USDT ^[7][22]. USDT still leads on transfers, supply and ownership for internal crypto transactions and peer-to-peer payments ^[23].

Venture money has gone the same way. By Cryptorank's tracking, payments, exchange and brokerage took 71.6% of the $2.26 billion raised in 127 rounds in the third quarter, about $1.62 billion ^[8][19]. Payment projects raised $1 billion over two quarters, behind prediction markets at $2 billion ^[9]. Total funding fell in the quarter, and more of it went to established payment ecosystems such as Crypto.com ^[10]. According to Cryptopolitan, payments and fintech have displaced the earlier waves of investment in memes and NFTs ^[11].

One reading has regulated USDC taking more card share as Genius Act rules take effect. On that reading, card spending keeps growing while token prices are weak, as it did through the recent setbacks and a brief bear market ^[2][7]. A second has Tether winning card volume back on its own rails. TRON led all chains with 23.2% growth in quarterly payment volume, and nearly half of stablecoin card payments ran on TRON, Base and BNB Chain ^[12][13]. A third has volatile tokens paying for more of the spending than the stablecoin story implies, in which case card volume falls the next time prices do. I lean to the first reading. The second is the strongest counter, since Plasma's 350% is the largest growth rate in the report ^[3]. The first reading would be wrong if a fourth-quarter breakdown by asset put USDC and USDT under a third of card volume, or if card volume fell along with token prices.