This Wednesday, September 26th, Goldman Sachs-backed cryptocurrency startup, Circle, announced the launch of a USD-pegged stablecoin. Dubbed as ‘USD Coin’ (USDC), the stablecoin is tied to the U.S. Dollar in 1:1 ratio.
Circle launched the USD Coin as a stablecoin with the aim to tokenize the U.S. Dollar. Additionally, the company says that USD Coin will also ensure easy transferability of money using the public blockchain. Furthermore, the company will first issue USDC to its partner institutions like Circle Trade and Poloniex exchange.
Furthermore, the company says that the service is available to institutions and individuals alike. Users need to tokenize their USD bank deposits in the form of the USD Coin. They can later spend it anywhere across the globe. When required, users can also cash out the coins back into their bank accounts. Note that Circle will charge you 0.1% fees to redeem your USDC.
Circle’s self-created CENTRE consortium has released the USD Coin as its first “fiat token.” Circle CEO, Jeremy Allaire, said that the company aims to provide “a consortia-based governance scheme for fiat on the internet.”
Circle also noted that, “Price-stable tokens are foundational requirements for enabling powerful new global financial contracts, products, and services on the internet.”
Circle believes that blockchain technology and crypto-assets have enabled easy exchange of value among global individuals. Furthermore, the company showered extra praise due to their ability to perform global transfers “instantly, globally, securely and at low cost.”
“A fundamental building block of this vision is the tokenization of fiat currency itself,” now referred to as fiat stablecoins.
“A safe, transparent and trustworthy layer for fiat to operate over open blockchains and within smart contracts is a necessary precondition to the broader and more revolutionary potential of a crypto-powered global economy,” Circle wrote in its blog post.
The USD Coin is made using the ERC20-standard. As a result, it makes it easy for exchanges and wallet providers to add support for the stablecoin.
Circle published a report stating that USD Coin has already got overwhelming support from more than 30 partners across the industry. The partner list comprises of exchanges, wallets, platforms, protocols, and applications.
To name a few, some popular exchanges adopting USD Coin include CoinEx, KuCoin, DigiFinex, and OKCoin. Likewise, some of the popular wallets like Coinbase, BitGo, Cobo, imToken have announced their support for USDC.
Specifically, payment processing giant BitPay is also one of those 30 partners. Stephen Pair, CEO of BitPay, said,
“BitPay has always been supportive of open source crypto-communities and blockchain initiatives and likes the direction CENTRE is taking with USDC. We envision a future where all digital assets and payments live on the blockchain.”
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