CELO rises 25% after project wins approval from Vitalik Buterin

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CELO, the native utility token of the Celo platform, rose about 25% to $0.68 after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin praised the project’s recent achievement in terms of daily active stablecoin addresses, data from CoinMarketCap shows .

According to a new report from Artemis, a data science layer for blockchains, the use of stablecoins by Celo has seen remarkable growth recently, driven by factors such as increased application adoption, increasing stablecoin supply, and strong demand in regions such as Africa.

@Celo recent past @trondao in daily active addresses for using stablecoin.

-What is behind this meteoric rise?
– Is Africa going through a stablecoin breakout?

A 🧵 pic.twitter.com/6Xn8CF6DfO

— Artemis (@artemis__xyz) September 16, 2024

The growing number of users of apps such as Minipay and Valora contributed to this growth, Artemis noted. Minipay is known as a non-custodial stablecoin-powered wallet built on the Celo blockchain, and Valora is a Celo-based digital wallet that supports multiple currencies such as CELO, Celo Dollar (cUSD) and Celo Euro (cEUR).

Minipay has expanded its reach to several African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa. Artemis suggested that stablecoin adoption underway on Celo will push Kenya and South Africa back into the top 10 in crypto adoption in 2025.

Commenting on Artemis’s report, Buterin said he was amazed by the progress Celo is making in improving access to basic payments and global finance. The co-founder of Ethereum believes that this is a key way that Ethereum can have a positive impact on the world.

“It’s amazing to see. Improving global access to basic payments and finance has always been a key way Ethereum can be good for the world, and it’s great to see Celo gaining traction,” said Buterin.

He also highlighted Celo’s recent discussion of its transition to a Tier 2 Ethereum network and its alignment with Ethereum’s cultural values.

Celo is set to transition from an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible layer 1 blockchain to an Ethereum layer 2 blockchain on September 26. The move is expected to improve the integration between the Celo and Ethereum networks, providing new capabilities not previously available.

So far this year, key stablecoin players like Tether and Circle have brought their tokens to the Celo blockchain. In February, Circle announced the debut of the USDC stablecoin on Celo, followed by a similar move from Tether in March.

These developments will help drive innovation and adoption of decentralized financial solutions on the Celo platform, as well as improve its ecosystem.

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