USD Coin

USD Coin (USDC) which launched in September 2018 is a stable coin pegged to the United States Dollar. It is a type of fiat-collateralized currency. This means that every USDC is backed by fully reserved assets. These include 1 USD or any U.S. regulation-approved asset of equal value. USDC is natively an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, but it is now available on other chains such as Avalanche, or Solana.

USDC was developed by Centre Consortium, founded by Circle and Coinbase in 2017. Circle is a P2P (peer-to-peer) payment company. Meanwhile, Coinbase is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms.

The main goal of USDC is the tokenization of the United States Dollar. Since 1 USDC is always an equivalent of 1 USD, this stablecoin is seen as a safe place in times of high market volatility. By utilizing blockchain technology USDC also gains in terms of security and transparency. Another major benefit is the speed of transaction processing. Any USDC transfers would be nearly instantaneous no matter the date, time of day, and region of the world.

USDCs transparency policy extends even outside of the blockchain environment. An accounting and audit company Grant Thornton runs monthly attestation on USDC. The attestation "reserve account reports" are available for download on Circle's website.

Circle allows developers to create decentralized applications (DApps) which utilize USDC. Circle's APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) have a set of core functions. They give the ability to transfer USDC, as well as regular fiat currency, which gets converted into USDC. Users and businesses may then use USDC for everyday payments. Such an approach lets businesses build commerce in a more open, global, and extensible way.