USD Coin (USDC) is pegged to the United States Dollar. The USDC is backed by dollar held in reserve. Centre, a consortium of Circle and cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase and Bitmain, which is a Bitcoin miner company manages USDC. USDC is the second best stable coin in the cryptocurrency space next only to Tether (USDT)
USDC has already expanded to several blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, Algorand, and side chains like Matic, xDai and more. Centre is working to add new members to manage USDC.
USDC 2.0 made possible gasless sends providing for improved security and administration. It is 100% backward compatible. The Circle USDC app is widely used to convert USD to USDC. Zeux is yet another app that can be used to pay at all stores like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.
Stellar Lumens is the third official blockchain supporting the USDC digital dollar stable coin. Very recently, Algorand was also announced as the official Chain for USDC.
PayTrie, Travala.com, Biki, Mercado Bitcoin, BiTTrex, and Gilded are a few companies supporting USDC. There are yet other companies like Maker, Circle, Sablier, Guarda Wallet, Ramp, Matrix Port, Outlet Crypto.com and several others. Several other companies are integrating with USD coin to establish use cases in decentralized finance.
USDC Regulatory Control
The latest attestation report from Grant Thornton LLP: USD Coin ($USDC) issued remain fully backed by US dollars held in reserve. Circulating supply stands at 3,002,021,340 USDC.
David Puth, CEO of Centre made a statement in response to the US Treasury Department’s OCC guidance for US Banks on the use of public blockchains and stablecoins for settlement and payment activities.
The recent announcement is indicative of the critical step to adopting extraordinary technologies which enable the use of public blockchains. It is well known that the current payment systems facilitated by the public and private sectors have inefficiencies when it comes to cross border payments.
Stable coins are able to help with a few inefficiencies as they are able to enable access for all participants at the same time making it possible to exchange value between individuals and businesses at the speed of the internet.
Public Blockchains and stable coins are now adopted for use by major US Financial Institutions and this is a major development in financial innovation. Every blockchain provides unique features for developers.
The OCC Letter points to how it is important to have more numbers of regulated financial institutions to participate in the innovation facilitated by the public blockchains and stable coins.
