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Circle, the company behind USDC, has announced it will allow other institutions to issue and redeem the dollar-pegged stablecoin. Until now, Coinbase and Circle have been the only platforms where users can redeem their USDC, having been the sole members of the CENTRE network

US Dollar Coin (USDC) received a blockchain upgrade to support faster transactions on Algorand. Algorand brings over 1,000 transactions per second (versus Ethereum's 15) and transaction fees of 1/20th of a cent to the USDC ecosystem, and soon to be released innovations offer the potential of scaling throughput by 8-10x on Layer 1, accompanied by new secure smart contracts that complement standard tokens such as USDC.

The Solana blockchain has become an Official Chain for USDC, continuing the expansion of USDC as an open standard and protocol for fiat digital currency on blockchains. Solana offers significant scalability and speed, delivering upwards of 50,000tps, with block production and settlement finality in 400ms, while operating with extremely low cost transaction fees at a tiny fraction of a cent.

Members of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem are turning to USD Coin USDC in order to interact with DeFi protocols either by earning high-yield income on lending protocols like Compound and Aave. Users are also providing liquidity to liquidity pools like Uniswap and Curve, the latter of which offers stablecoin to stablecoin trading. Following the launch of Curve's governance token, CRV, on August 14, there was a surge in USDC on-chain activity. The launch of the token has also helped Curve earn the third place in terms of value locked, following Aave and Compound, with $1.27 billion locked.

Visa is connecting its global payments network of 60 million merchants to the U.S. Dollar Coin (USDC) developed by Circle Internet Financial on the ethereum blockchain. The digital currency is now valued at $2.9 billion. While Visa itself won't custody the digital currency, effective immediately, the partnership will see Circle working with Visa to help select Visa credit card issuers start integrating the USDC software into their platforms and send and receive USDC payments.

"MoneyGram has partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to enable consumers to send money using Circle's USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, and convert directly to and from fiat across its global retail platform. Working alongside Circle, MoneyGram will also enable "near-instant backend settlement," account funding and local fiat withdrawals using USDC. United Texas Bank will act as the settlement bank to complete the process within the regulatory framework."

The Centre Consortium announced that USD Coin (USDC) stablecoins will only be backed by cash and U.S. Treasury Bills. Centre oversees which entities are allowed to issue the stablecoin and use its API. In July, its parent company Circle, which issues the USDC, revealed that USDC was only 61% backed by cash (including money market funds) and cash equivalents (high-quality short-term fixed income securities). The July attestation report showed that reserves included Yankee Certificate of Deposit (13%), commercial paper (9%), corporate bonds (5%) and municipal bonds and U.S. Agencies (0.2%).

Tether and Circle, the issuers of USDT and USDC, have both moved to allay fears that their US dollar-pegged stablecoins are directly exposed to the fallout from the FTX debacle. CTO Paolo Ardoino said that Tether has no exposure to FTX or Alameda, although Alameda has previously redeemed a lot of USDT, but no credit exposure has matured. CEO Jeremy Allaire said that Circle has never made loans to FTX or Alameda, and has never received FTX's native token, FTT, as collateral, nor has it ever traded or held a position in FTT. Interestingly, both USDT and USDC became briefly unpegged today (November 10, 2022), with USDT spiking down, and Circle spiking up

USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin issuer Circle has announced the mutual termination of its proposed merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Concord Acquisition. The deal was announced in July 2021 with a preliminary valuation of $4.5 billion and was then amended in February 2022 when Circle's valuation ballooned to $9 billion. USDC is currently the 2nd largest stablecoin in circulation, with a market cap of $43 billion.

"Binance's move to automatically convert USDC and two other stablecoins may lead to more USDC flowing into the exchange, according to the CEO of Circle, which issues the coin. "Binance is trying to consolidate dollar liquidity w cash equivalent stables. That's good for liquidity and market depth," said Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire on Twitter."

Circle's USDC stablecoin, the second-largest stablecoin at $42 billion of market cap, depegged from the USD, trading as low as $0.88 on Coinbase this morning (March 11, 2023). This followed Circle's announcement that $3.3 billion of USDC's reserves were held at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) which was shut down yesterday by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation and taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Also, Coinbase announced that USDC redemptions would be temporarily suspended.

Tether's USDT opened the year at a market cap of $66.2 billion, but has grown 22% to $81 billion. Circle's USDC has moved the opposite way, losing 21% of its market cap. USDT's share of the stablecoin space is up to 61.5%, its highest mark in two years. The collapse of TerraUSD in May 2022 and shutdown of BinanceUSD (BUSD) in February have increased concentration in the stablecoin market. USDC is struggling amid regulatory concerns in the United States and fallout from banking chaos, when Circle revealed it had 8.25% of its USDC reserves in Silicon Valley Bank. Meanwhile, concerns persist exist around USDT over its underlying reserves.

"Circle will launch USDC natively on Celo to further everyday adoption of digital currencies and assets. Celo is a carbon-negative, mobile-first, EVM-compatible blockchain built for the real world. USDC is the leading regulated digital dollar powering payments and access to a stable store of value worldwide."

It has been previously reported that the publication of Circle's USDC stablecoin attestation reports have become very tardy. However, JP Koning also notes that between February and March 2021, the reports have gotten a bit less transparent. Circle no longer discloses the precise amount of U.S. dollars it holds in custody. Whereas they used to say "US Dollars held in custody =..." in March they started saying "US Dollars held in custody accounts are at least equal or greater than the USDC tokens outstanding..." One possibility is that Circle is investing in assets that cannot be easily valued, and going down the same slippery slope as Tether.

Tether (USDT), with a market cap surpassing $16 billion, continues to hold the lion's share of stablecoins in circulation, but two smaller rivals are trouncing it in crypto's hottest market this year, decentralized finance (DeFi). Measured by the total value locked in six of the most popular DeFi protocols - Compound, Maker, Uniswap, Curve, Aave and Balancer - USD coin (USDC) is in the lead among stablecoins followed by dai (DAI), the native stablecoin to MakerDAO. USDC and DAI have market caps of $2.74 billion and $608 million, respectively.

Circle, a key supporter of the USDC stablecoin, received an "investigative subpoena" from the U.S. Securities and Exchange (SEC) Enforcement Division in July 2021. The subpoena arrived one month after Circle began onboarding corporate USDC holders into its first high-interest yield product, Circle Yield. The subpoena requests "documents and information regarding certain of our holdings, customer programs, and operations," but Circle did not elaborate on what the SEC's investigation was focused on.

The fine print in Circle's end-November attestation report for USDC stablecoins says that it no longer owns non-government cash equivalents (i.e., commercial paper). Only cash and Treasury Bills are being used to back USDC.

Circle Internet Financial, a global internet finance firm and the issuer of USD Coin (USDC) has entered into an agreement for a $400 million funding round with investments from BlackRock, Fidelity, Marshall Wace LLP and Fin Capital. The funding round is expected to close in the second quarter. In addition to its corporate strategic investment and role as a primary asset manager of USDC cash reserves, BlackRock has entered into a broader strategic partnership with Circle, which includes exploring capital market applications for USDC.

MoneyGram launched its stablecoin-powered payment channel, giving users the ability to send USD Coin (USDC) payments worldwide that can be withdrawn as cash by recipients. The service is being rolled out across several key remittance markets, including Canada, the United States, Kenya and the Philippines. Global cash-out functionality will be available by the end of June. To encourage adoption, the USDC transfer service will carry zero fees for the first 12 months. The new transfer service was built on the Stellar (XLM) blockchain and allows Stellar wallet users to send USDC to recipients around the world.

Coinbase customers can now earn interest on their USDC stablecoin holdings at a 1.25% annual rate, paid out on a monthly basis.