Coinbase, a San Francisco based exchange and brokerage firm, has announced that from Wednesday 24th October its customers will be able to buy, sell, send and receive USDC, a USD pegged Cryptocurrency that had initially been unveiled by Circle.
Stablecoins Best Suited For Business and E-commerce Transactions
Customers of the firm from all over the globe will be able to send and receive the token while those in the United States will be able to purchase and sell the token from Coinbase.com, except for customers in New York City. The token which is backed by physical US dollars found in bank accounts controlled by the company has not yet been listed on the order-book Crypto exchange of the firm, the Coinbase Pro, however, the firm has announced that this will be done in the next few weeks.
While making comments on why it decided to support the stablecoin, Coinbase stated that fiat-based digital currencies will be able to not only contribute to but also promote the development of a financial system that is more open. The firm also added that stablecoins will also promote the adoption of decentralised applications (dApps) stating that Blockchain based digital dollar such as the USDC had the advantage of being easier to use in programming, to send fast, to utilize in dApps and to store in comparison to dollars based in a bank account.
The firm also noted that using stablecoins like USDC was more ideal in business transactions and e-commerce as it was easier to make payments in the digital assets due to the fact that payments could be made at all hours of the day without the risk of value volatility that is seen when using any other form of digital asset as the working capital.
Partnership Between Coinbase And Circle On the Stablecoin Project
Currently, stablecoins are only used as a proxy for the US dollar in Crypto trading. As a whole, digital assets pegged on the US dollar are seeing daily trading volumes of over $2 billion with most of these trades being made in the controversial tether token.
In boosting the support for the USDC stablecoin, Coinbase has partnered with Circle and has come in as a founding member in the CENTRE Consortium. The consortium oversees the development and issuance of USD based stablecoin, as well as other stablecoins, that have already been and will be developed in the future.
Going by the announcement, Coinbase and Circle have already come together to develop the underlying technology for USDC but the extent of Coinbase’s participation is not yet known. The USDC is based on the Ethereum network and has been designed as an ERC-20 token.
Importance Of A Co-owned Stablecoin
While launching the USDC stablecoin with the help of Coinbase, Circle’s co-founder and Chief Executive Jeremy Allaire noted that it was important to have an asset that had no single owner or issuer. He stated that with Coinbase coming onboard to co-found CENTRE and to unveil the USDC stablecoin, the value of a shared stablecoin was reinforced.
