Visa has launched a new Online Analytics Dashboard specifically for stablecoins, promising a clearer view of the data by filtering out extraneous ‘noise.’ This new platform offers insights into four major stablecoins across nine different blockchains, making it easier for users to access and interpret what was previously a confusing mix of real-time data.
Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, emphasized in a blog post that although stablecoin data is publicly available, it often requires significant interpretation to be usable, especially when compared to traditional financial systems. The complexity arises from stablecoins’ varied uses in decentralized finance (DeFi), such as arbitrage and liquidity provision, which are not directly comparable to traditional financial transactions.
By applying simple heuristic filters, Visa claims to dramatically refine the data, citing an example where a month’s transfer volume was adjusted down from $2.65 trillion to $265 billion. This adjustment reflects a more realistic picture by eliminating ‘inorganic’ bot activities that inflate the data.
Additionally, Sheffield explains how stablecoin transactions are double-counted in typical analytics. For instance, converting $100 from one stablecoin to another on a platform like Uniswap is recorded as $200 of total volume due to the movement of funds to and from the smart contract. However, Visa’s analytics will record this as $100, aligning more closely with conventional financial transaction reporting.
Visa’s dashboard not only tracks the supply, transactions, and users of prominent stablecoins like USD Coin, Tether, PayPal USD, and Pax Dollar but also provides these insights through easy-to-understand charts and graphs. Importantly, it excludes off-chain transactions, focusing solely on blockchain-based activities.
In addition to this development, Visa continues to integrate blockchain technology into its operations. It supports stablecoin payments with USD Coin and has partnered with platforms like MetaMask to facilitate crypto withdrawals using its debit cards. Moreover, Visa’s ongoing collaborations, including projects with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and participation in the U.K.’s Regulated Liability Network, showcase its commitment to advancing blockchain utilization in mainstream financial practices.