Stablecoins on Binance Smart Chain. Your Gateway to DeFi
Stablecoins on Binance Smart Chain provide a seamless on-ramp to the chain’s fast-growing DeFi ecosystem
Stablecoins are booming. In less than twelve months, the stablecoin market went from a few billion dollars in market capitalization to a total value of over $30 billion, fuelled by the demand for a stable store of value and as an on-ramp in the burgeoning DeFi markets.
Read on to learn what stablecoins are, why they’ve become so popular, and which ones you can buy, hold, and trade on Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
What Are Stablecoins?
Stablecoins are a type of digital currency that seek to avoid the price volatility associated with cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, and BNB. In short: the main goal is to retain price stability. And so they exist to offer a more stable alternative — hence the name.
Price stability is typically achieved with each coin backed by a fiat currency or commodity to achieve parity with the pegged asset. For example, Binance USD (BUSD) is backed 1:1 by US dollars held in a bank account.
Stablecoins act as a bridge between fiat and digital currency by providing the benefits of open, accessible, borderless cryptocurrency with the stability of sovereign currencies
The top five leading stablecoins (measured by market capitalization) are Tether USD (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), Dai (DAI), Binance USD (BUSD), and Paxos Standard (PAX).
The Rise and Rise of Stablecoins
The first-ever stablecoin, Tether USD, was launched in 2014. Benefiting from its first-mover advantage, the somewhat-controversial stablecoin has managed to maintain the top spot as the most-used stablecoin in the global crypto capital markets.
It wasn’t until 2018 that a new wave of dollar-backed stablecoins — such as USDC and PAX — hit the market, providing crypto traders and investors with a broader choice in price-stable digital currencies.
The total market value of stablecoins rose steadily as new entrants joined the fray. But it wasn’t until early 2020 that stablecoins moved into the limelight in the cryptoasset markets.
Stablecoin issuance shot up in Q1/2020—fuelled by the need for a stable store of value as the global equity and crypto capital markets collapsed at the start of the pandemic.
Then, when the markets recovered, stablecoins received a boost from the booming DeFi market, driven—in part—by the yield-farming craze.
As an easily accessible store of value, stablecoins have emerged as the most popular digital currency on-ramp into the DeFi markets, with stablecoin lending taking a massive share of the total value locked up in DeFi.
Pegged Coins Bring Stablecoins to Binance Smart Chain
Binance Smart Chain is a smart contract-enabled parallel blockchain to Binance Chain, which allows for cross-chain swaps from original chains into so-called “pegged coins” on Binance Smart Chain.
Pegged coins are backed 1:1 by reserves of the original token to enable the use of the digital asset on Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain.
Using the Binance Bridge, crypto holders can seamlessly convert an ERC-20 USDT token on Ethereum to a BEP-20 USDT token on Binance Smart Chain.
The cross-chain swap takes just minutes and enables you to convert Ethereum or Tron-based stablecoins to Binance Smart Chain with ease. In the example above, we are swapping 1,000 ERC-20 USDT to 1,000 BEP-20 USDT.
The same principle applies when you want to peg-out from Binance Smart Chain and swap your coins back to ERC-20 tokens, for example.
Top 3 Stablecoins on Binance Smart Chain
The three most recognized and widely used stablecoins on Binance Smart Chain are USDT, USDC, and BUSD.
Tether USD
Tether USD (USDT) is the market-leading dollar-backed stablecoin (with over $30 billion in circulation). In the form of a pegged BEP-20 token, USDT can be deployed on Binance Smart Chain in a wide range of DeFi protocols.
USDC
USD Coin (USDC) is the fastest-growing fully reserve stablecoin backed 1:1 by US dollar reserves held in regulated financial institutions in the United States. As a BEP-20 token, USDC is a popular price-stable asset in BSC’s DeFi lending market.
BUSD
Binance USD (BUSD) is Binance’s very own dollar-backed stablecoin that was launched to provide a Binance-native alternative to other leading stablecoins. BUSD can be utilized in a wide range of DeFi protocols and is a go-to base currency on decentralized trading pools on BSC.
How to Earn Yield on Stablecoins on BSC
Stablecoins not only provide a secure store of value, but they can also be deployed to earn yield in Binance Smart Chain’s fast-growing DeFi ecosystem.
Arguably, the easiest way to earn yield on stablecoins is on decentralized yield farming and lending protocols, such as PancakeSwap, Beefy, and Venus.
For example, on the lending protocol Venus, you can deposit BUSD to earn a 19.35% annual yield on your stablecoins. On Beefy, meanwhile, you could deposit BUSD to earn 27%+ APY for lending your funds to ForTube via the Beefy API.
The opportunities to earn a yield on a price-stable asset seem almost endless and will only increase as the DeFi market continues to grow on Binance Smart Chain.
Trust Wallet: A Home for Stablecoins
Trust Wallet is one of the most popular multi-asset crypto wallets in the world, with over 5,000,000 users.
One of the reasons why Trust Wallet is so popular is that it enables you to securely store thousands of digital assets on multiple different chains, including all the leading stablecoins.
All major (and many minor) stablecoins are supported by Trust Wallet—from USDT as a BEP-20 token on Binance Smart Chain to BUSD as ERC-20 on Ethereum.
What’s more, you can directly deploy your stablecoins in yield-generating DeFi protocols using the Trust Wallet DApp Browser.
Whether you want to deposit your stablecoins in lending protocols or deploy them in liquidity pools to yield farm tokens, all the most powerful yield-generating options are only a few clicks away with Trust Wallet.