Penny Production Ends in the U.S. as Polygon Showcases Sub-Cent Transaction Capabilities

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• The U.S. Mint is issuing its final run of pennies, marking the end of the one-cent coin’s 232-year production history.
• The Polygon’s low gas fees, high throughput, and PoS architecture make it uniquely suited for microtransactions.

On November 12, the U.S. Mint pressed its final circulating penny in Philadelphia. The move followed a January recommendation from the Department of Government Efficiency to eliminate the coin, and it aligned with President Donald Trump’s February directive to end penny minting.

Since minting each penny costs 3.69 cents, producing them has become financially impractical. Last year, the U.S. Mint lost $85.3 million despite producing 3.2 billion pennies. The coins that are already in circulation will remain valid until they phase out with time.

Following this development, some experts have seen this as a step toward on-chain transactions powered by blockchain technology. In a recent conversation with Paul Barron, Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal explained the scale of that growth:

“At the start of 2025, Polygon had 200 TPS. Today that TPS stands at around 1000 to 1500 TPS. So we scaled the blockchain 5.7 to 8 times, and our daily transactions were around 3,000,000 transactions daily on the chain. They are now trending towards 5 million transactions, and these are organic payment transactions primarily on stablecoins and on stablecoins.”

Polygon’s Footprint in Microtransactions

Polygon’s Proof-of-Stake chain delivers transaction fees well below one cent. Polymarket reportedly pays just $0.007 per transaction. Other institutions are taking notice: Calastone, a global funds network that handles £250 billion a month, recently announced tokenized fund share classes running on Polygon.

Sandeep also revealed Polygon’s plan to make stablecoin transfers feel as simple as sending money on Venmo. In Asia, R25 rolled out its yield-generating rcUSD+ token on the Polygon network in November.

This launch adds to a growing list of partnerships Polygon has secured throughout November. As we previously reported , Mastercard is expanding its Crypto Credential system to support self-custody wallets, and Polygon has become the first blockchain to power verified, human-readable aliases.

Revolut has integrated Polygon across its platform to enable instant stablecoin transfers, POL trading, and staking for users in 38 countries. So far, Revolut has processed more than $690 million in activity on the network, with more than 14 million of its customers engaging with crypto-enabled features.