Circle and Coinbase have joined forces to launch USD Coin, a stablecoin technology and network scheme that has already gained support from over 40 companies within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
CENTRE Consortium, a joint venture co-founded by peer-to-peer payments platform Circle and US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, was created to establish a standard for fiat on the internet and providing a governance framework and network for the global, mainstream adoption of fiat stablecoins.
As a result of the common vision of an open global financial system built on crypto rails and blockchain infrastructure, as well as the need to build interoperable protocols and standards needed for fiat to work over the open internet, CENTRE launched USD Coin as its first major initiative.
The stablecoin was first issued by Circle and is now available to customers on Coinbase Pro and Coinbase.com. USD Coin gained support from the ecosystem, including wallets, exchanges, custodians, dApps and other leading firms who are helping to build a new open global financial system. CENTRE wants to introduce more issuers onto the network and publish formal membership guidelines.
“Asset-backed stablecoins provide critical infrastructure needed to build an open financial system: A price-stable medium of exchange and a token that can be employed in a wide range of smart contracts and decentralized financial protocols. They hold the promise of interoperable global payments for everyone on the planet and they help unlock the incredible power of smart contracts for tokenizing a wide range of assets and economic arrangements. We’re excited to see the ecosystem continue to grow around the USDC standard”, Coinbase said on the announcement.
The consortium claims USD Coin is the industry’s first open, fungible and interoperable fiat stablecoin as customers can tokenize dollars into USDC and redeem USDC into dollars through both Circle and Coinbase.
Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, has recently enabled instant trading and higher purchase limits for its US clients. The purchase limit has been enhanced from $25,000 a week to the $25,000 per day and will help US customers avoiding multiple layers of approval and delays when acquiring cryptocurrencies which often extended few days.
