Coinbase president and chief operating officer Emilie Choi has announced that the reserves backing the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) will be consolidated into cash and United States government treasuries. A Sunday blog post from Centre Consortium — the entity that was collaboratively established by top U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase and blockchain financial services company Circle, which issues USDC — stated that USD Coin’s reserves will soon be entirely held in “cash and short duration U.S. Treasuries.” On Twitter, Choi attributed the change in policy to backlash against USDC’s reserves expanding beyond cash, cash equivalents and U.S. treasuries in May. The …

Digital asset exchange and service provider Crypto.com has launched withdrawals via U.S. dollar bank transfers for institutional clients across more than 60 countries. According to an Aug. 18 announcement, the expanded fiat functionality for institutional account holders has been enabled by its partnership with Circle. Institutional customers are now able to withdraw dollars from their Crypto.com USD Coin (USDC) wallet via bank at a one-to-one basis using a unique code provided by Circle. Bank transfers are expected to be processed within three business days. Kris Marszalek, CEO and co-founder of Crypto.com, stated: “Our integration with Circle provides Institutional clients with …

USD Coin (USDC), Circle’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, seemingly lost one of its biggest competitive advantages over its main rival, Tether (USDT). Major crypto exchange Coinbase made an important change on the USD Coin page on its website following an audit that revealed that not all of USDC’s reserves were held in cash. This ran contrary to the previous statement that “each USDC is backed by one U.S. dollar held in a bank account.” Coinbase visitors are now greeted with a statement that says USDC is “backed by fully reserved assets” when they enter the USD Coin webpage. This new claim states: …

United States Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner Hester Peirce, known colloquially as “Crypto Mom,” has slammed the SEC for its $10-million settlement with cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex. The SEC announced the $10-million settlement on Monday, with Poloniex being charged with facilitating trades in unregistered securities between July 2017 and November 2019. The SEC asserted that Poloniex employees “stated internally” that they wanted to be “aggressive” in circumventing securities regulation in a bid to increase market share by listing new digital assets that may be deemed securities under the Howey Test of 1946. Poloniex elected to neither admit nor deny any wrongdoing. …

Goldman Sachs-backed digital payment company Circle has officially disclosed plans to become a full-reserve national digital currency bank in the United States. Announcing the news on Monday, Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire noted that Circle is willing to operate under the supervision and risk management requirements of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. “We believe that full-reserve banking, built on digital currency technology, can lead to not just a radically more efficient, but also a safer, more resilient financial system,” Allaire stated. The CEO added …

The private stablecoin market will surge parabolically in the next four years despite the existing regulatory uncertainty, Unstoppable Domains CEO Matthew Gould believes. In a Thursday interview with Business Insider, Gould predicted that the stablecoin market would hit $1 trillion by 2025 to see roughly a tenfold increase from around $115 billion at the time of writing. “We may even do it quicker than that,” the CEO noted, adding that the global stablecoin adoption will be partly driven by the growing acceptance of decentralized finance applications. “The more people with stablecoins in the pocket, the more people who can participate …

The bid to introduce human-readable addresses as an alternative to the usual lengthy alphanumeric crypto wallet address system is set to achieve another milestone following the recent partnership between Circle and Unstoppable Domains. According to an announcement issued on Wednesday, Unstoppable Domains, a blockchain domain name provider, and USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin issuer Circle are collaborating to release readable “.coin” usernames for USDC transfers. As part of the partnership, both companies will collaborate to enable support for .coin username extensions across wallets and crypto exchanges that support the popular stablecoin. Under this arrangement, USDC transfers will become akin to sending …

The digital asset exchange platform Crypto.com has now enabled withdrawals of USD Coin (USDC), meaning that users can withdraw the stablecoin and receive United States dollars at a one-to-one ratio directly to their bank account. The announcement comes just over a month after the platform launched support for USDC deposits, following a new partnership with the stablecoin’s issuer, Circle. The partnership enabled Crypto.com users to transfer fiat currency into their trading accounts to receive an equivalent amount of USDC. USDC, first released by Goldman Sachs-backed Circle in September 2018, is a popular USD-pegged stablecoin that crypto investors can use to …

The derivatives exchange Bitget is set to become one of the first exchanges to list USD Coin (USDC) as collateral for trading crypto derivatives. The development comes courtesy of a strategic collaboration between the Singaporean crypto derivatives trading service and USDC stablecoin issuer Circle, as reported by Crowdfund Insider on Monday. Bitget will support USDC margins for Quanto Swap Contract trading as part of the partnership, a move the exchange says will provide more liquidity for the market. USDC now joins Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), EOS, and XRP as accepted margins for Quanto Swap contracts. Bitget launched Quanto Swap contracts …

There will be an official audit of the world’s most popular stablecoin, Tether (USDT), within months, according to the project’s general counsel. An audit for the world’s third-largest digital asset has been awaited for several years, and increased regulatory pressure appears to have accelerated the process. In a rare mainstream media interview on CNBC, Tether chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino and general counsel Stuart Hoegner were asked some pressing questions on the subject of USDT’s backing and transparency. Hoegner responded to the question by saying: “We are working towards getting financial audits, which no one else in the stablecoin sector …

Auditors working for Circle have disclosed the reserves backing the firm’s USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, while Mad Money’s Jim Cramer has questioned Tether’s lack of transparency with its Tether (USDT) reserves. Multi-national tax advisory firm Grant Horton conducted the audit, and a reserve attestation report was published on Tuesday, which showed that 61% of USDC’s reserves were held in cash and cash equivalents equating to $13.4 billion as of May 28. Circle’s total commercial paper accounts for 9% of its reserves, and the figures provide a stark contrast to Tether’s reserves, in which undisclosed commercial paper accounted for 49.5% of …

Amid China’s cryptocurrency crackdown, souring investor sentiment and the United States Federal Reserve chairman blasting stablecoins, there hasn’t been much to cheer about on the crypto front lately, but Circle Internet Financial’s initial public offering announcement in mid-July showed that a crypto startup was still capable of attracting billions of dollars in fresh investments. Circle’s merger with Concord Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, values Circle at $4.5 billion, and the combined entity is expected to debut on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL before the end of the year. The merger/offering was generally …