Circle, a company backed by Goldman Sachs and quite popular lately after buying the crypto exchange Poloniex in February this year, launched their own USD-pegged stablecoin, called USDC (or US Dollar Coin). The token will be backed 100% by USD in fiat and was issued as an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain.
According to the launch blogpost:
Price-stable tokens are foundational requirements for enabling powerful new global financial contracts, products, and services on the internet. USDC is the first of several fiat tokens CENTRE expects to deliver, and Circle is the first of several forthcoming CENTRE members to launch USDC issuance.
The token is already available on Circle Poloniex and Circle Trade, the two trading platforms of the company.
Recently, the Winklevoss Gemini exchange launched their own stablecoin too, GUSD (Gemini US Dollar).
Looks like there is a trend amongst the large institutional investors, (yes, the ones that were bashing Bitcoin hard just 1 year ago), to launch their own pegged stablecoins. This looks to me like a preparation for massively entering the crypto market. Having your own stablecoin, pegged to the dollar, lowers your exposure and allows a much smoother trading activity, instead of just having to use fiat.
There are (still) very restrictive regulations regarding fiat-to-crypto transactions, so instead of using the good ol' USD, many players are just creating their own version of USD (one backed with real USD, but still not USD) as a safety blanket.
The only question, for me, is: "why did it took them so long?"...
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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