The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) and Circle have revealed that the US dollar coin (USDC) is live on the Stellar network.
Circle, the principal financial technology firm behind USDC development, is often cited as a regulatory-friendly organization. In a Tuesday blog post, the SDF explained that users could access the USDC on Stellars decentralized exchange and five Stellar-integrated wallets.
USDC can be traded with six stablecoin pairs across the whole of Stellars ecosystem of 9,000 assets. As for developers, they can accept payments at scale.
They can also issue programmable payouts, build marketplaces, and later on, receive a yield on top of their balance through a special free API service provided by Circle.
Credit Card Giant Accelerated the Launch of USDC
The SDF and the Centre Consortium announced Stellar as an official chain of USDC in October 2020. This should reportedly lessen the dependence of the stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain.
The number of USDC tokens in circulation has doubled since credit card company Visa partnered with Circle to integrate USDC into its payment network of 60 million merchants.
Notably, over the last year, the market capitalization of USDC has surged over 1,000%. This is a more than a ten-fold rise. Meanwhile, the total number of operations on the Stellar network surpassed 1.5 billion. And last year, it witnessed 104% year-over-year growth, said the announcement.
Speaking to Forbes, Stellar Development Foundations Denelle Dixon stated that Stellar needs a strong, stable asset:
“We want to do cross border payments fast this is going to help provide the scale.”
A New Age
The SDF also disclosed that ecosystem companies FinClusive, Stably, and JST would provide liquidity and on/off ramps. In turn, six additional platforms, including Wyre, will connect USDC to their payment operations. The SDF recently invested $5 million in Wyre.
Commenting on these collaborations, Dixon said:
“This integration is going to be a powerhouse for growth in the Stellar ecosystem and a catalyst towards achieving our mission of creating equitable access to the global financial system. It presents significant business opportunities for both new and existing companies to build on the respective strengths of USDC and Stellar.”
Following his statement, Jeremy Allaire, Chairman, and CEO of Circle, emphasized that Stellar is creating “a new generation of financial applications:”
“Having a trusted and transparent dollar stablecoin, like USDC, in the market and available across Circles suite of API services for payments and treasury operations will help accelerate the pace and scale of these innovations”
