Circle Invest and Bitmain to Release USD Coin

Circle Invest has huge plans to increase its portfolio of services offered, as well to expand them. After the announcement of buying one of the world’s most popular crypto exchanges, Poloniex, the company’s efforts have doubled, as were the benefits.

On Tuesday, 15th May, Circle announced via an official Press Release about releasing USD Coin. According to it, Circle USDC is a “solution that enables customers to purchase and use USDC fiat tokens for payments and trading in the crypto ecosystem“, that offers “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.”

Poloniex was one of the crypto exchanges that previously listed USDT, but the idea of designing its own token was a difficult decision to take following the revolt created around the USDT feasibility issue. Trading tokenized USD offers less volatility for crypto pairs, as most users are looking for the low risk of crypto. Characteristics that make the difference between USDC and other tokens refers to the fact that token is based on the ERC20 concept and meets the bank’s legal criteria.

“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,” the Press Release quotes.

Circle Invest Partners with Bitmain

An unexpected announcement was the collaboration between Circle and Bitmain, the largest ASIC maker and an important player in the crypto mining sector. Bitmain is financing the CENTER platform and Circle’s USDC project with $ 110M. Among other partners who joined the Circle team are DG Capital, Breyer Capital, General Catalyst, Accel, Digital Currency Group, Pantera, and Blockchain Capital and Tusk Ventures.

A Circle’s representative has expressed his vision, saying that:

“Bitmain is one of the most important and forward-thinking companies in crypto and has become a critical infrastructure provider for the entire crypto economy. Bitmain Co-founder and CEO Jihan Wu is well known for espousing a vision similar to ours regarding the creation and adoption of a new global economy powered by cryptographic assets, distributed contracts, and open source blockchain technology. We are excited to be working directly with Bitmain on realizing our shared vision.”

According to it, Bitmain will support CENTER’s plans and Circle’s project in order to improve international interoperability, an aspect from which will benefit all participants.