USDC, the stablecoin now native to four blockchains, could soon be on eight to 10 more networks, CoinDesk has learned.
It’d be the broadest expansion of the $25 billion stablecoin to date, potentially surpassing the eight blockchains that support Tether’s USDT, the market leader with a $63 billion market cap.
“We anticipate that in the coming months USDC will become available on Avalanche, Celo, Flow, Hedera, Kava, Nervos, Polkadot, Stacks, Tezos, and Tron,” according to a draft announcement from USDC administrator CENTRE obtained by CoinDesk.
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The expansion comes as stablecoins draw increasing scrutiny from regulators, with Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, specifically mentioning USDT and even the relatively obscure TITAN in a recent talk about emerging systemic risks. While Fed Vice Chair Randal Quarles followed with more positive remarks about stablecoins, it is clear the sector is squarely on Washington’s radar.
CENTRE, which is a consortium run by crypto exchange Coinbase and payments firm Circle, said expanding to other chains helps “drive individual and enterprise adoption of open blockchain technologies.”
“We anticipate that USDC on these blockchain platforms and multichain protocols will further accelerate the use of the world’s fastest growing digital dollar currency,” CENTRE said in the draft announcement.
USDC was launched on Ethereum in 2018 and expanded to Algorand, Stellar and Solana in the second half of 2020.
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The potential expansion to other blockchains follows a pair of announcements showing momentum behind USDC as an interest-generating savings vehicle. Circle announced its Circle Yield and DeFi API products late last week.
In its draft announcement, CENTRE said updates on the timing of the further integrations would be issued “over the balance of the year.”
