Coinbase has restarted its Stablecoin Bootstrap Fund to increase the liquidity of USD Coin (USDC) in both established and up-and-coming decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms.
The exchange announced on Tuesday that its first allocations will add USDC liquidity to Ethereum-based lending platforms Aave and Morpho, as well as Solana-based trading platforms Kamino and Jupiter.
“As we scale the fund over time and distribute liquidity across more protocols and stablecoins, we’re particularly eager to collaborate with pre-launch teams or those seeking to drive stablecoin growth from day one,” Coinbase said.
The deployments will be managed by Coinbase Asset Management and aim to help users access “reliable rates across mature and emerging protocols,” the company added.
Strategic Push to Challenge USDT’s Dominance
Coinbase co-created USDC with its issuer, Circle Internet Group, and remains central to its ecosystem. While Tether (USDT) leads the stablecoin market with a capitalisation of $164.6 billion, more than $100 billion ahead of USDC, Coinbase hopes the fund will attract more traders and borrowers to its token.
Data from DefiLlama shows that the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols stands at $165.4 billion, with Aave and liquid staking protocol Lido leading at $41 billion and $40.8 billion, respectively.
Returning to its Roots
This fund revival comes six years after Coinbase first launched the initiative in September 2019 to support Ethereum-based DeFi projects like Uniswap, Compound and dYdX with USDC liquidity. The original fund deployed $1 million each to Compound and dYdX, helping USDC gain traction in the DeFi space after its 2018 launch.
USDC currently has a market capitalisation of $65.6 billion and is available on several blockchains, including Ethereum, Base, Solana, Polygon, Aptos, Avalanche and Sui.
