Circle, a payment startup owned by Goldman Sachs, announced that it’s launching a new cryptocurrency called the Circle USD Coin. - How will the FED react?
Via Circle
The invention of cryptographic assets and blockchain-based computing have ushered in the next major era of the open internet. But a price-stable medium of exchange and store of value is missing, and badly needed in order for global financial interoperability to function reliably and consistently. Transacting in currencies which fluctuate with extreme volatility creates complexity and fragile settlement contracts, especially when compared to transacting in “tokenized fiat money” or fiat-pegged crypto assets.
A price-stable currency, such as a token pegged to the US dollar, is critical for enabling mainstream adoption of blockchain technology for payments as well as for supporting maturation in financial contracts built on smart contract platforms, such as tokenized securities, loans, and property. There are several interesting approaches to solving this need, spanning algorithmic reimaginations of money supply to crypto-backed tokens to fiat asset-backed tokens.
Circle USDC (USD Coin) is a solution that enables customers to purchase and use USDC fiat tokens for payments and trading in the crypto ecosystem. USDC provides a full reserve US dollar-backed stablecoin, and is based on the open source fiat stablecoin framework developed and governed by CENTRE, which will provide independent oversight of Circle’s offering.
Existing fiat-backed approaches have lacked financial and operational transparency, have operated in unregulated jurisdictions with unknown banking and audit partners, and have been built as closed-loop ecosystems and closed proprietary technologies.
Circle USDC addresses these problems by providing detailed financial and operational transparency, operating within the regulated framework of US money transmission laws, and reinforced by established banking partners and auditors. It is built on an open source framework with an open membership scheme that eligible Financial Institutions (FI) can participate in (CENTRE). USDC will be ERC-20 tokens minted, issued, and redeemed based on network rules defined by CENTRE.
Circle will only be the first issuing member of the CENTRE network, and further tokenized fiat stablecoins may be issued by other audited, licensed, participating network members. More about CENTRE is available here: https://centre.io
Further information on Circle’s forthcoming USDC offering is available as an FAQ here: https://circle.com/en/usdc-faq