Coinbase adds Circle's USDC stablecoin

[gentlemand]

https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1054764504259543041

Coinbase are now supporting Circle's USDC.

I wonder where all this is heading.

How will they deal with stablecoins that have been used for dodgy stuff? Do they have extra compliance and surveillance? Will Coinbase find themselves with worthless USDC if Circle refuse to redeem blacklisted coins? Will Coinbase be cashing out on behalf of punters and presenting a bill to Circle?

[Raja_MBZ]

The underlying technology behind the USDC was developed collaboratively between Coinbase and Circle, in our capacity as partners and co-founders of the new CENTRE Consortium.

Today’s launch is made possible by the collaboration between Coinbase and Circle, as co-founders of the new CENTRE Consortium. Both Coinbase and Circle operate with a compliance-first approach and a track record of security. That’s why we believe CENTRE is uniquely positioned to offer USDC to people who want to take advantage of the benefits of stablecoins.

Source: https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-and-circle-announce-the-launch-of-usdc-a-digital-dollar-2cd6548d237

Well, Coinbase sort-of developed it along with Circle, both would be equally responsible for anything that goes wrong with it.

[gentlemand]

First time I've seen Coinbase mentioned as a co founder type but maybe I haven't been paying much attention.

I don't understand why they chose Ethereum considering its occasional seizures and fee explosions but they're better qualified than I am to decide. ETC makes more sense as it's quieter but maybe the whiff of decentralisation is enough to scare them away.

This just in - https://twitter.com/econoar/status/1054785269843415040

Back door confirmed, but that should be no surprise to anyone.

[NeuroticFish]

Coinbase are now supporting Circle's USDC.

I wonder where all this is heading.

I think that everybody got fed up with Tether drama and give everybody the chance use all they want. OKex and Huobi also listed other stable coins too.
The speculators will be able to use anything they want as long as they bring profit to the exchanges.

And on the long term the winner could be ... Ethereum, since it seems to be the transport layer of choice.

Back door confirmed, but that should be no surprise to anyone.

It's not a surprise and many will not care. It's that "it will not happen to me" logic most people use.

[Slow death]

I wonder where all this is heading.

Well, they saw a big hole that the tether has and they decided to explore that hole. we are in the business world and any mistake that is made will be an opportunity for adversaries. until the moment we have the score in:

USD Coin USD Coin (USDC): $1,00  USD

Rank 71

Tether (USDT): $0,984973 USD

Rank 8

The most unbelievable thing about this is: Tether did not come down from his position and I find it very difficult to get out of his position

[1Referee]

The most unbelievable thing about this is: Tether did not come down from his position and I find it very difficult to get out of his position

Tether has the name and the fame, so it will take some time before it will start losing market share to other (more reputable) stablecoins.

Currently there are around ~2 billion USDT in circulation, which means that over 0.5 billion USDT has been taken out of circulation recently. The interesting factor here is who or what has taken them out of circulation. I very much doubt that Bitfinex has the resources and the banks willing to cooperate with these level of fiat transfers.

It might also have been a desperate attempt from Bitfinex itself to get rid of as much supply as possible to stabilize the price, but that would then mean there was a large number unbacked USDT in circulation, which is shady on its own.

The sooner USDT loses market share to USDC for example, the less damage an implosion of Bitfinex will inflict on the market. In other words, we're getting rid of a major ticking time bomb.

[LeGaulois]

Stablecoin will be the new flower of 2019. Coinbase and Circle will surely hit a couple million more to add to their annual report. I commented here not long ago, from a Bitcoin wallet to a Neo bank, this is what Coinbase becomes step by step.

[Raja_MBZ]

I don't understand why they chose Ethereum considering its occasional seizures and fee explosions but they're better qualified than I am to decide. ETC makes more sense as it's quieter but maybe the whiff of decentralisation is enough to scare them away.

And on the long term the winner could be ... Ethereum, since it seems to be the transport layer of choice.

Long-term winner? It's looking more like a long-term loser to me. Ethereum developers are unable to find a possible scaling solution (they're making promises regarding sharding update like every month, but unable to produce anything at all), and this USDC can prove to be yet another CryptoKitties-type thing for Ethereum.

@gentlemand Maybe Coinbase wants to prove that Ethereum is a failure and then move USDC to Ethereum Classic?



Man, if only Cardano's ecosystem was 100% ready to face it all up, it'd have easily filled up this "vacuum". I'm afraid this vacuum will be filled by someone else by the time Cardano gets fully ready-to-go.

[squatter]

This just in - https://twitter.com/econoar/status/1054785269843415040

Back door confirmed, but that should be no surprise to anyone.

In a way, this might comfort some USDC holders because it means it's a "legit" stablecoin issued by licensed money transmitters. That's worlds apart from what Tether is. The biggest fear with Tether is their bank accounts will be seized and the value of USDT will plummet. Nobody should be surprised if/when that happens after years and years of unlicensed money transmission and banking secrecy. That's definitely way less of a concern with Circle and Coinbase.

It does put a damper on the idea of secondary markets, though. If you wanted to trade USDC P2P to hedge dollar value without KYC, you have to consider who you're trading with and where the money came from.

[gentlemand]

This just in - https://twitter.com/econoar/status/1054785269843415040

Back door confirmed, but that should be no surprise to anyone.

In a way, this might comfort some USDC holders because it means it's a "legit" stablecoin issued by licensed money transmitters. That's worlds apart from what Tether is. The biggest fear with Tether is their bank accounts will be seized and the value of USDT will plummet. Nobody should be surprised if/when that happens after years and years of unlicensed money transmission and banking secrecy. That's definitely way less of a concern with Circle and Coinbase.

It does put a damper on the idea of secondary markets, though. If you wanted to trade USDC P2P to hedge dollar value without KYC, you have to consider who you're trading with and where the money came from.

You'd have to be pretty suicidal to treat these coins with anything other than great carefulness. I've seen some theorising that this is where people with shit currencies will head instead of bitcoin. I can't imagine circle and coinbase welcoming millions of Iranians and Venezuelans.  These are going to be much more limited than many imagine I reckon.

[BitHodler]

I can't imagine circle and coinbase welcoming millions of Iranians and Venezuelans.  These are going to be much more limited than many imagine I reckon.

If it's free to move around and trade off-exchange like USDT is, how would they be able to limit people if they don't bother to use Coinbase as fiat exit point?

The only proper way to limit usage is to have USDC become transferable only to approved exchanges. I don't think they will do that with how it instantly decreases the potential and usability of this stablecoin.

As far as why they chose to go with Ethereum, it has much faster confirmations, and there is way more programmability to utilize compared to Bitcoin's slow USDT.

[gentlemand]

I can't imagine circle and coinbase welcoming millions of Iranians and Venezuelans.  These are going to be much more limited than many imagine I reckon.

If it's free to move around and trade off-exchange like USDT is, how would they be able to limit people if they don't bother to use Coinbase as fiat exit point?

The only proper way to limit usage is to have USDC become transferable only to approved exchanges. I don't think they will do that with how it instantly decreases the potential and usability of this stablecoin.

As far as why they chose to go with Ethereum, it has much faster confirmations, and there is way more programmability to utilize compared to Bitcoin's slow USDT.

Freeze the wallets. If the Iranian government wound up with hundreds of millions of USDC you can bet your bippy they'll try to trace it and erase it. It'll be the same as most money laundering I presume, layers of proxies all the way down the line. Coinbase will have a ton of zombie accounts trying to cash out.

[1Referee]

Long-term winner? It's looking more like a long-term loser to me. Ethereum developers are unable to find a possible scaling solution (they're making promises regarding sharding update like every month, but unable to produce anything at all), and this USDC can prove to be yet another CryptoKitties-type thing for Ethereum.

Ethereum is the only candidate able to actually deliver on that front. On top of that, Coinbase CEO is an Ethereum enthusiast as well, so it all adds up.

I have seen some one pop up the name of ETC, but that's just ridiculous. Soon USDC will become a $X billion dollar token, no way Coinbase (or anyone else with common sense) would even consider it for a second to use ETC as platform. How much of an attack factor will ETC be if a $1-$1.5 billion platform runs a multi billion token on top of it that governments might be out to shut down.

As far as why they chose to go with Ethereum, it has much faster confirmations, and there is way more programmability to utilize compared to Bitcoin's slow USDT.

I'm actually glad they didn't choose Bitcoin to have this token be built on top of it. The less you mess around with governments and their precious fiat currencies, the less incentive they have to attack you.

[squatter]

If it's free to move around and trade off-exchange like USDT is, how would they be able to limit people if they don't bother to use Coinbase as fiat exit point?

The only proper way to limit usage is to have USDC become transferable only to approved exchanges. I don't think they will do that with how it instantly decreases the potential and usability of this stablecoin.

As far as why they chose to go with Ethereum, it has much faster confirmations, and there is way more programmability to utilize compared to Bitcoin's slow USDT.

Freeze the wallets. If the Iranian government wound up with hundreds of millions of USDC you can bet your bippy they'll try to trace it and erase it. It'll be the same as most money laundering I presume, layers of proxies all the way down the line. Coinbase will have a ton of zombie accounts trying to cash out.

This market -- even if it inflated to the size of Tether -- is way too small for that. Effective money laundering requires very high levels of transaction liquidity. There's not nearly enough stablecoin liquidity for significant laundering.

Sanctioned Russians are apparently moving hundreds of billions of dollars through the likes of Bank of America, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank. Why bother with stablecoins?

Even Bitcoin and Ethereum would be much more useful for laundering than USDC or anything like it.

[magneto]

https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1054764504259543041

Coinbase are now supporting Circle's USDC.

I wonder where all this is heading.

How will they deal with stablecoins that have been used for dodgy stuff? Do they have extra compliance and surveillance? Will Coinbase find themselves with worthless USDC if Circle refuse to redeem blacklisted coins? Will Coinbase be cashing out on behalf of punters and presenting a bill to Circle?

That's the problem with supporting stablecoins in most cases - their value is only guaranteed by a central entity which defeats the whole purpose of having support for a crypto in a first place.

And that central entity is able to say which coins they consider to be legitimate and can be redeemed and which are not. So that seriously affects the fungibility of it all. Coinbase could likely be an alternative path for cashing out these coins, if support is confirmed.

Anyhow, I wouldn't use coinbase with or without the stablecoin element to it. Their customer support has been terrible and my personal experience with them has been subpar, not to mention the fact that they suspend accounts quite easily if you deal with casino sites, etc.

[gentlemand]

That's the problem with supporting stablecoins in most cases - their value is only guaranteed by a central entity which defeats the whole purpose of having support for a crypto in a first place.

And that central entity is able to say which coins they consider to be legitimate and can be redeemed and which are not. So that seriously affects the fungibility of it all. Coinbase could likely be an alternative path for cashing out these coins, if support is confirmed.

Anyhow, I wouldn't use coinbase with or without the stablecoin element to it. Their customer support has been terrible and my personal experience with them has been subpar, not to mention the fact that they suspend accounts quite easily if you deal with casino sites, etc.

I'd class it as crypto-facilitated fiat, not crypto itself. And we all know it would have some pretty comprehensive restrictions. They're not going to let every scumbag on the internet run riot and then welcome their USDC when it's time to capitalise on it.

[squatter]

That's the problem with supporting stablecoins in most cases - their value is only guaranteed by a central entity which defeats the whole purpose of having support for a crypto in a first place.

And that central entity is able to say which coins they consider to be legitimate and can be redeemed and which are not. So that seriously affects the fungibility of it all.

Fungibility is always under threat when it comes to exchanges. They're trusted intermediaries; they can censor and steal your money. This is what Bitcoin taught us.

It's not like you can freely withdraw BTC from Dream Market into your Coinbase account. That's asking for trouble.

I think centralized stablecoins are just a logical extension of the already existing exchange ecosystem. When you hold USD on Coinbase, that money can easily be confiscated. Coinbase can just freeze your account and reduce your USD balance to zero -- and then maybe pass your information onto law enforcement. Why would exchange-issued stablecoins be any different -- because they're "crypto?" They're still just centralized IOUs from an exchange.