Editor's Note: This article comes fromBlocklike（ID：iblocklike）, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
Editor's Note: This article comes from
, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.Backed by Coinbase and Circle, USDC in early 2021 has already begun gearing up.
On Twitter, Circle's founder seemed to be restless.In the stable currency market, USDT issued by Tether took the lead in drawing a strong stroke by virtue of its first-mover advantage.However, incidents such as opaque account funds, mortgage rate issues, and USDT being accused of random additional issuance have occurred frequently, which has caused the market to question USDT many times, and has also allowed "latecomers" in the stablecoin market to find the right direction to make efforts.USDC, which has been the "second place" stable currency for a long time, one of the main directions of effort is "compliance". Backed by Coinbase and Circle, USDC in early 2021 has already begun gearing up.In the past two weeks, relevant U.S. regulatory agencies have frequently voiced their views on the regulation of stablecoins. On January 5, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency allowed banks to issue and use stablecoins for payment, and the final word was finalized.
On the other hand, debank data shows that the supply of stablecoins on Ethereum has increased from US$3.425 billion at the beginning of the year to US$21.092 billion, an increase of 516%. Among them, the supply of USDT ranks first, accounting for 63.29% of the total supply of stablecoins, followed by USDC, accounting for 20.36%.
In the new market environment, the USDT cake is far from what it was a few years ago. Perhaps it is time to share it?
Jeremy Allaire, founder of the USDC issuer, has been speaking on Twitter recently, and he seems to be unable to bear it anymore.On the evening of January 4th, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the largest banking regulator in the United States, announced on its official website that U.S. banks are allowed to use blockchain and U.S. dollar stablecoins as settlement infrastructure in the U.S. financial system.According to the document, banks may use stablecoins to facilitate customer payment transactions on independent node verification networks, including issuing stablecoins and exchanging stablecoins for legal tender. This news is widely regarded by the community as "an important step for the public chain to replace SWIFT (a financial communication network between banks worldwide)".In this regard, Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, the issuer of the stablecoin USDC, posted 9 tweets in a row, praising the "huge victory" of this digital currency and stablecoin. His main points include:1. The breaking news from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the largest banking regulator in the United States, under the guidance of the new policy, U.S. banks can use public chains and U.S. dollar stablecoins as the settlement infrastructure for the U.S. financial system.2. The new letter of explanation stipulates that banks can regard public chains as infrastructures similar to SWIFT, ACH and FedWire, and stablecoins such as USDC as electronic value storage tools. This is of great significance and should not be underestimated.3. Decentralized, license-free, open-source, and network-mediated software is gradually becoming the foundation of the U.S. financial system and even the global economy.4. This paves the way for the use of advanced U.S. dollar digital currencies, such as USDC, as the mainstream payment medium for all payments and settlements, helping the United States take the lead in embracing the power of the public chain.5. It also provides the basis for financial institutions to run blockchain nodes. These institutions can even become verification nodes, but they must be supervised.These regulatory requirements mainly include that stablecoins must comply with anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing and one-to-one redemption. There are various signs that the U.S. authorities seem to be tightening the regulatory framework for stablecoins.image description
(Active Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire)
Circle's Development History: Broken Arm Survival 2019, Institutional Year 2020Currently, USDC is second only to USDT among stablecoins.In September 2018, USDC was launched as a "fully collateralized USD stablecoin", which is a compliant USD stablecoin jointly issued by Circle and Coinbase, which meets most of the regulatory requirements.Among them, Circle is a digital currency-based start-up under Goldman Sachs, and Coinbase is the first bitcoin exchange with a formal license in the United States. This background has allowed USDC to gain the recognition of the first batch of digital currency exchanges.Aiming at the point that "the USDT issuer Tether has no third-party audit of its 100% reserve ratio", the CEO of Circle stated bluntly before launching the stable currency: "Because of the loopholes in USDT, major It only makes sense for a company to actually create a stablecoin that is trusted globally.”Indeed, Circle has always emphasized at the beginning of USDC issuance that the company's operations are transparent, and regular and credible reports from third-party auditing companies can be used to prove that the issuance of these stablecoins is based on the full amount deposited in third-party banks. U.S. dollars are reserved. At the same time, USDC's assets are under the custody of banks, and banks have higher regulatory requirements, and funds are relatively safer.In terms of compliance, Circle has already prepared payment licenses for the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, and has compliance channels for the entry and exit of digital assets in dollars, pounds, and euros. Circle was once known as the company with the largest number of global licenses in the encrypted asset industry. In addition, partners who subsequently joined its system and issued USDC must also hold local digital asset industry licenses.Back in September 2018, when USDC was issued, the timing was not so good. Looking at the development of the digital currency market, after this point in time, the market has gradually turned from a bull market to a bear market.Facing the slow bear market in 2019, Circle's choice is to cut off side branches and focus on "stable coins".At the end of 2018, Circle first sold its cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex, and then sold its over-the-counter (OTC) trading. In April 2019, Circle again focused its retail digital asset business, Circle Invest, on USDC-related businesses.By 2020, Circle's main line layout is still on "payment".In cooperation within the blockchain industry, the issuance of USDC is increasing. Last year, Circle successively cooperated with Stellar, Solana, Algorand and other public chains with faster computing speed, and issued corresponding versions of USDC on the chain.In August 2020, in the face of the menacing DeFi, Circle quickly introduced the concept of "sending transactions without gas" and launched USDC 2.0.On the other hand, cooperation with traditional inter-institutional payments is also an important direction for Circle to expand.In March 2020, Circle launched a stablecoin business API and USDC business accounts to allow more companies to accept USDC as a payment method, and the number of such accounts soon exceeded 1,000. Jeremy Allaire publicly stated that most of these new users come from Internet companies. Judging from the feedback from Asian market participants, these growing demands mainly come from small and medium-sized enterprises, and their demand for safe and practical digital dollars.Just a month ago, Circle released its big news in the direction of payment at the end of the year: on December 2, 2020, the payment giant Visa will reach a cooperation with Circle to integrate its payment network with as many as 60 million merchants The integration of the stablecoin USDC led by the investor.The cooperation with Visa brings digital currency payment a big step further. At the current stage, the cooperation between the two is mainly to integrate USDC into the platform of the selected Visa credit card issuer to support USDC payment. Previously, companies that have signed a digital asset service with Visa can try to integrate USDC.
(Visa's partnership with Circle has attracted a lot of attention)All kinds of "penetration" feedback on real data is the rapid rise of USDC circulation value. Jeremy Allaire said at the beginning of this year that USDC circulation increased by 1 billion in December last year, and the increase will reach 800% in 2020. Currently, USDC circulation has reached 436 million.Although it is still far from the circulation of USDT, the efforts of the second-ranked USDC are paying off.
2021: Stability and instability of stablecoinsIn addition to USDC, a compliant stablecoin with a large institutional background, which is advancing, the stablecoin DAI of MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization on Ethereum, has sprung up, standing on the second line of stablecoins. From the perspective of liquidity and trading volume, although Tether still maintains its leading position in the near future, other stablecoins are still likely to catch up.While innovative products continue to emerge, supervision is gradually becoming stricter. In November 2020, members of the U.S. Congress jointly proposed the "STABLE" stablecoin regulatory draft, which requires stablecoin issuers to hold a banking license and must be approved by the competent authority before issuing the currency, which instantly ignited the industry. Many dissatisfaction within. Subsequently, when the White House Financial Market Working Group issued comments on the draft, although its attitude eased, it still did not further clarify the legal status of stablecoins.Controversy continues, and some uncertainty remains.
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