- USDC is a stablecoin that is pegged to the United States dollar and currently runs on the Ethereum, Stellar, Algorand, and Solana blockchains.
United States, June 30, 2021 /AlexaBlockchain/ – USDC, a stablecoin that is pegged to the United States dollar and currently runs on the Ethereum, Stellar, Algorand, and Solana blockchains, could soon be on eight to ten more networks, including Avalanche, Polkadot, and Tezos.
USDC (USD Coin) is managed by a consortium called Centre, which was founded by Circle and includes members from the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and Bitcoin mining company Bitmain, an investor in Circle.
USDC reserves are regularly attested (but not audited) by Grant Thornton, LLP, and the monthly attestations can be found on the Centre Consortium’s website.
A draft announcement from CENTRE on the expansion of USDC to new blockchain networks, mentioned:
“We anticipate that in the coming months USDC will become available on Avalanche, Celo, Flow, Hedera, Kava, Nervos, Polkadot, Stacks, Tezos, and Tron.”
The expansion comes as stablecoins draw increasing scrutiny from regulators, with Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, specifically mentioning USDT and even the relatively obscure TITAN in a recent talk about emerging systemic risks. While Fed Vice Chair Randal Quarles followed with more positive remarks about stablecoins, it is clear the sector is squarely on Washington’s radar.
CENTRE, which is a consortium run by crypto exchange Coinbase and payments firm Circle, said expanding to other chains helps “drive individual and enterprise adoption of open blockchain technologies.”
USDC expansion on more number of blockchain networks will further accelerate the use of the world’s fastest growing digital dollar currency.
“We anticipate that USDC on these blockchain platforms and multichain protocols will further accelerate the use of the world’s fastest growing digital dollar currency,” CENTRE said in the draft announcement.
USDC was launched on Ethereum in 2018. Since its launch it has rapidly grown to capture a significant place in the stablecoin space, recently surpassing a market cap of $25 billion. Hundreds of companies, products and services support the USDC standard, including digital wallets, exchanges, DeFi protocols, savings, lending and payment services.
The potential expansion to other blockchains follows a pair of announcements showing momentum behind USDC as an interest-generating savings vehicle. Circle announced its Circle Yield and DeFi API products late last week.
In its draft announcement, CENTRE said updates on the timing of the USDC integrations would be issued “over the balance of the year.”