On Tuesday (May 14), digital asset exchange Coinbase announced that it had expanded support for USD Coin (USDC) crypto trading in both Coinbase Consumer (Coinbase.com) and Coinbase Pro to 85 countries.

This is how Coinbase announced the news today (at 14:06 UTC) on Twitter:

As CryptoGlobe reported on 26 September 2018, “USDC Coin” (USDC for short) was launched on that day by Goldman-funded FinTech startup Circle Internet Financial (better known as “Circle”). This is a regulated fully-collateralized dollar-backed stablecoin that was originally announced on 16 May 2018. USDC is based on an open source fiat stablecoin framework developed and governed by the CENTRE project.

Circle said at the time that the problems with existing fiat-backed solutions (such as Tether’s USDT) were that they “have lacked financial and operational transparency, have operated in unregulated jurisdictions with unknown banking and audit partners, and have been built as closed-loop ecosystems and closed proprietary technologies.”

In contrast, Circle’s USDC stablecoin deals with these issues by “providing detailed financial and operational transparency” and “operating within the regulated framework of US money transmission laws, reinforced by established banking partners and auditors.” USDC tokens are ERC-20 compatible (meaning that they run on the Ethereum blockchain); they are minted, issued, and burnt/redeemed based on network rules defined by CENTRE. 

Then, on 23 October 2018, Circle announced that Coinbase (another member of the CENTRE consortium) was making USDC available to its customers on Coinbase Consumer and Coinbase Pro, and that customers could “tokenize dollars into USDC and redeem USDC into dollars through both Circle and Coinbase.”

In a blog post titled “Expanding USDC crypto trading globally”, Coinbase said that:

  • It was making USDC trading available on Coinbase Consumer and Coinbase Pro in 85 countries.
  • It was doing this to help “accelerate the global adoption of crypto trading” and to provide wider access to “a stable store of value.”
  • There are more than 300 million USDC tokens currently in circulation today, and that USDC is supported by 100+ ecosystem partners.
  • Stablecoins “have the potential to materially improve the lives of people in countries where inflation is eroding wealth.” It mentioned Argentina and Uzbekistan as two examples of such countries.
  • Coinbase serves customers in 103 jurisdictions, 50 of which were added today: 

    Angola, Armenia, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Benin, Bermuda, Botswana, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Maldives, Mauritius, Mongolia, Montenegro, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Rwanda, Serbia, South Africa, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Zambia​

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