Blog Article

USDC’s Expansion Across the Stellar Ecosystem

Author

Caroline Young

Publishing date

USDC

Circle

How partners are leveraging Stellar USDC

USDC is one of the world’s most reputable dollar digital currencies, having established itself as an accessible, trusted stablecoin that moves at the speed of the internet. Users trust USDC because it's issued by regulated financial institutions, governed by the Centre Consortium, fully backed by reserve assets, and redeemable on a 1:1 basis for US dollars. Businesses all over the world are turning to USDC to power use cases that only this kind of digital asset can enable.

Stablecoins are to ecosystem partners as currencies are to banks. Only the Federal Reserve issues and controls supply of the US dollar, but all kinds of financial institutions, businesses, and individuals transact with the currency. USDC is the first time we see a high-tier issuer in dollar digital currency fulfilling functions within a transparent regulatory framework. With the Centre Consortium as its governing body, USDC has built up a trusted reputation — that has led to incredible adoption, growing from 3B in circulation at the end of 2020 to 15B in circulation today.

So, now we’ve got liquidity of this well established dollar digital currency on the Stellar network, what does that mean? First and foremost, it enables new money flows for our ecosystem. Stellar USDC has interoperability with other Stellar assets representing world currencies, creating the ability for cross-currency transactions. And USDC can be used to hold or onboard value to Stellar via anchors such as Wyre, Stably, BitGo, and FinClusive.

Stellar USDC represents both the strengths of USDC and the Stellar network: a stable, trusted, and accessible digital dollar currency on a fast, cost-efficient, and secure network that connects to all the world’s existing financial systems. Knowing that standard compliance protocols apply throughout the entire ecosystem, businesses can confidently transact with partners worldwide taking advantage of Stellar’s decentralized exchange, trading USDC with other Stellar-based assets 24/7 while leveraging local anchors to convert their fiat to digital and back.

Since its launch, we’ve highlighted several of our ecosystem partners and how they are currently using or planning to leverage Stellar USDC and take advantage of these incredible features. But it’s not just how they are implementing Stellar USDC — it’s how they’re using this digital currency to create opportunity and build products for other businesses.

Wyre, Stably, BitGo, and FinClusive feature a variety of financial services and infrastructure products. Wyre offers payments APIs for apps, Stably a customizable payments dashboard, BitGo a non-exchange wallet, and FinClusive Compliance-as-a-Service on top of their payments services. By becoming Stellar USDC anchors, they are able to provide new and useful on/off ramps throughout the network.

Businesses on Stellar can use these anchors to tap into markets to gain more access points, empowering users in new markets to transact on an international scale with unprecedented speed and super low costs. As more anchors support Stellar USDC, they will further extend the digital currency’s global reach, and the world’s global financial system can interoperate with far less friction than ever seen before. That is significant, and that is why Stellar USDC presents such a huge opportunity for the network and ecosystem.

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Curious how to get started with USDC on Stellar? Here's what you need to know.