A global crypto finance company Circle finally releases its first stablecoin USDC, which is already available on Circle Trade and Circle’s exchange Poloniex.
After four months of talks about a dollar-backed stablecoin, the Boston-based peer-to-peer payments and technology company Circle has finally announced its release.
Developed with the help from the company’s CENTRE affiliate consortium, USD-backed digital token called USD Coin (USDC) officially went live today, September 26. Being rated 1:1 to a fiat currency, USDC is now available for buying, selling and sending on Circle Trade and Poloniex exchange, which was acquired by Circle earlier this year.
According to Circle co-founders Sean Neville and Jeremy Allaire, the stablecoin will be used as a means to tokenize U.S. dollars to easily transfer value on public blockchains. USDC allows individuals and institutions to deposit U.S. dollars from bank accounts and convert fiat currency into tokens usable throughout the Internet.
As Jeremy Allaire told in an interview:
“Market infrastructure like stablecoins will become the base layer that supports every financial application. It has to be legitimate, trustworthy, built on open standards. We are solving a lot of these fundamental problems that exist. That’s a huge difference from something like Tether, and we think the market will very quickly gravitate to that.”
USDC represents itself the first stablecoin developed by Circle. In comparison to traditional cryptocurrencies, this token is rigid to volatility. It solves many issues like, for example, it allows users to convert Bitcoin or Ethereum tokens to USDC instead of cashing them out, so that it would be easier to buy cryptocurrencies again in the future.
The stablecoin is also a great solution for those seeking to avoid traditional financial institutions, as it provides its users with an option of transferring USDC to each other without any need for a bank as a third party.
Apart from Poloniex, the token will be available on other exchanges, including Huobi, OKEx, DigiFinex, CoinEx, KuCoin, Coinplug and XDAEX. Moreover, Circle has recently partnered with Kyber Network, IDEX, Radar Relay and Tokenlon at the protocol level, while Dharma, Origin, BlockFi, MoneyToken, Melonport and Centrifuge will work with the stablecoin for lending, investing and payments.
The news about the stablecoin’s release came today together with another one related to Circle as well. According to an announcement, Circle is adding four new digital assets to its Circle Invest platform. With the new listings of EOS, Stellar, 0x, and Qtum, the total amount of digital currencies available on Circle makes up 11, which means that Circle Invest becomes one of the top apps for accessing a wide range of assets.
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