Cryptocurrency finance company Circle has released the third audit attestation of the reserves of its fiat-backed stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), according to an official statement Jan. 16. The third-party audit of Circle’s United States dollar reserves was issued by independent accounting firm, Grant Thornton LLP. According to the report, as of Dec. 31, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. UTC, 251,211,148 USDC tokens were issued and outstanding, while the firm holds $251,211,209 in custody accounts, a $61 surplus in USD reserves. Circle’s statement concludes: “As of the Report Date and Time, the issued and outstanding USDC tokens do not exceed the balance …

CEO and co-founder of Goldman Sachs-backed crypto finance company Circle has said the biggest regulatory hurdle facing crypto today is the lack of clarity from the United States securities regulator over how to define various crypto assets. Jeremy Allaire made his remarks in an AMA reddit thread he initiated on Jan. 10 together with Circle co-founder Sean Neville and other representatives from the firm. In response to a question over Circle’s efforts to educate regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about the crypto industry, as well as specific challenges the company faces, Allaire wrote: “The biggest and most …

The over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk at cryptocurrency finance firm Circle had a notional volume of $24 billion in 2018, according to an official Medium blog post on Jan. 3. Per the statement, Circle executed 10,000 OTC trades with 600 different counterparties, at $24 billion in volume. As such, the company claims to have become a “core liquidity provider to the entire crypto ecosystem.” According to Circle, the firm now partners with over 1,000 institutional clients such as exchanges, token projects, OTC desks, asset managers, and other global endowments. Circle stated: “This year, we anticipate further incremental growth in institutional adoption …

Goldman Sachs-backed Circle has published a third-party audit of its USD-pegged stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) for the second time, according to a company blog post Dec. 18. USD Coin — an ECR20 token first announced this May and released in September — is one of a swathe of new stablecoins notionally collateralized 1:1 by a major fiat currency. The audit has been completed by major Chicago-based accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP, and is Circle’s second consecutive attestation report on the state of its USD reserves since the stablecoin’s launch. The first audit was published Nov. 20 and provided information through …

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder of crypto finance company Circle, told CNBC in an interview Friday, Dec. 14, that Bitcoin (BTC) will be worth “a great deal more” than it is now. When asked about the Bitcoin price in three years, Allaire told Squawk Box host Andrew Ross Sorkin that he does not make “significant price predictions,” while adding, “I think it is certainly going to be worth a great deal more that it is today.” Allaire also stated that while Bitcoin is attractive as a non-state store of value, a slew of other tokens will enter the space, and the bases …

Crypto exchange Binance has added Circle’s USD-pegged stablecoin USD Coin as a quote asset for several new trading pairs in its combined Stablecoin Market (USDⓈ). The exchange has announced this in an official post published Dec. 14. USD Coin (USDC), first announced by Goldman Sachs-backed Circle this May, and released in September, is one of a host of new stablecoins notionally pegged 1:1 to a major fiat currency. This November, Binance, currently the world’s largest crypto exchange by daily trade volume, had rebranded its Tether (USDT) Market as the combined USDⓈ market to allow for the support of more trading …

A major United Kingdom charity fund executive said at the Bloomberg Crypto Summit in London this Friday that the recent crypto market crash is just a “bump in the road,” Bloomberg reports Dec. 7. James Bevan, the chief investment manager at CCLA, told the audience during a panel that he doesn’t see the recent decrease in the value of cryptocurrencies “as an existential crisis”; rather, he noted that he believes this is just “a bump in the road.” Bevan then also compared crypto to traditional finance, stating that “institutional investors have had plenty of bumps in the road in conventional …

There are over 2,000 different coins in existence right now, each with their own unique characteristics, uses and communities, while there are masses of different blockchains, platforms and exchanges — all of which answer to competing needs and values. On the one hand, this profusion is one of the key driving forces behind innovation in the crypto sphere. But on the other, it arguably acts as a block against widespread adoption, as the lack of unified standards means that some morally questionable endeavors give the rest a bad name. The past year has seen an intensifying push toward producing international …

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced it would list Circle’s USD-pegged stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) in a blog post Nov. 15, with deposits opening immediately. USDC, which the financial services company announced in May this year and released in September, is one of an increasing number of cryptocurrencies notionally tied 1:1 with a major fiat currency. Binance is not the first major platform to list USDC, U.S. exchange Coinbase supporting the asset since the end of last month. “For increased transparency, USDC has engaged a top-ranking auditing firm to release monthly balance attestations of the corresponding USDC and USD balances held/issued,” …

Crypto finance company Circle has joined the Global Digital Finance (GDF) industry body as a founding member to develop a global “Code of Conduct” for crypto, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Wednesday, Oct. 31. Circle has confirmed participation with the GDF on Twitter, stressing the company’s commitment to developing standards for the industry in order to promote the acceleration and adoption of digital assets. Other industry players in the group purportedly include Coinbase, ConsenSys, DLA Piper, Diginex, and others. Today the GDF released the Code of Conduct and Taxonomy for Cryptographic Assets after approval by the …

Major U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has launched the USD Coin stablecoin (USDC), making it the first stablecoin for trade on the platform, Cointelegraph learned at the Money 20/20 conference Oct. 23. The underlying technology behind USDC was developed collaboratively between Coinbase and blockchain-powered payments technology company Circle. Coinbase customers in supported jurisdictions can now purchase, sell, send, and receive USDC at coinbase.com and the exchange’s iOS and Android apps. Coinbase notes in the statement that its U.S.-based customers outside the state of New York are able to buy and sell, while customers around the world can send and receive the …

Hong Kong’s securities and futures commission (SFC) is planning to introduce crypto regulation to protect investors, the SFC chairman told Hong Kong English-language newspaper the South China Morning Post (SCMP) Monday, Oct. 15. Chairman Carlson Tong Ka-shing — who will pass his position in the SFC to Tim Lui Tim-leung on Oct. 19 — said in an interview that the watchdog is not considering a ban on cryptocurrency platforms as the Chinese mainland has done, adding that they don’t think that a total ban is “necessarily the right approach”: “It will not work in today’s internet world when trading can …