The daily trading volume of TrueUSD (TUSD) stablecoin has surged past $1 billion, as per data from crypto price tracker CoinGecko. This surge is attributed to the support provided by Binance, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, which includes a zero-fee discount to buy and sell bitcoin (BTC) using TUSD. TUSD's trading volume has seen a significant increase from earlier this month, when it recorded mostly sub-$100 million daily trading volume. The BTC-TUSD pair on Binance alone recorded $713 million in trading volume in the past 24 hours, according to Binance's data.
Binance's decision to choose TUSD as a favored stablecoin trading pair on its platform has contributed to the recent popularity of the stablecoin. This comes amid a regulatory crackdown on Binance's namesake stablecoin, Binance USD (BUSD), which has led New York regulators to order BUSD issuer Paxos to stop minting these tokens. Binance had earlier supported BUSD through a zero-fee trading promotion and by removing rival stablecoins like TUSD from its platform. However, following the directive for Paxos, Binance reintroduced trading with TUSD in early March, granting a zero-fee trading promotion exclusively to the BTC-TUSD pair starting March 22. This week, the exchange expanded TUSD trading to popular cryptocurrencies like solana (SOL), optimism (OP), polygon (MATIC), and XRP.
Clara Medalie, head of research at crypto markets data provider Kaiko, has suggested in an email to CoinDesk that Binance has potentially found a successor to its namesake stablecoin in TUSD, as it has seen rapid growth. The growth of TUSD highlights a major reshuffling of the $132 billion stablecoin market, which is grappling with ongoing regulatory actions and a banking crisis. TUSD has emerged as one of the winners so far, with its market capitalization surging to $2 billion from below $800 million at the start of January, making it the fifth largest stablecoin.