Circle to Launch USDC Natively On Celo + More Crypto News
Get your daily, bite-sized digest of blockchain and crypto news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s news.
In today’s edition:
- Circle to Launch USDC Natively On Celo
- Stablecoin Development Gathers Pace
- PDX to Release Beta Version of Banking and Payments Product
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Circle to Launch USDC Natively On Celo
The Celo Foundation has announced that the USDC issuer Circle will launch the stablecoin natively on Celo.
Integrating USDC on Celo will allow businesses and developers to provide their users around the world with fast, efficient, and secure payments and a stable store of value with digital dollars, the press release shared with Cryptonews said.
Additionally, the Celo ecosystem will benefit from the availability of institutional on-/off-ramps like Circle Mint, available to institutional and enterprise customers. It facilitates greater on-chain activity and the ability to convert USDC to and from local currencies.
Furthermore, Celo developer cLabs will suggest USDC as an official gas currency for the Celo community via a forthcoming governance proposal.
Circle’s and Celo’s missions align, the announcement said. The former aims to raise global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of value. The latter wants to create the conditions of prosperity for all, it said.
“The upcoming launch of USDC on Celo marks a significant step forward in both missions as Circle and Celo aim to leverage blockchain technology for a more open, equitable, and connected financial future.”
Stablecoins have risen as a dominant real-world asset (RWA) with a market cap of $134.10 billion, said the announcement. This allows for broad financial access and inclusion through easy, permissionless, and borderless transfers of assets onchain, it argued.
The Celo ecosystem “is excited to bring more RWAs onchain through our partnership with Circle,” said Isha Varshney, Head of Strategy and Innovation at the Celo Foundation. “We want to be the best ecosystem for stablecoins, which has proven to be among the industry’s prevailing use cases, as institutional investors come into Web3.”
Shamus Noonan, Senior Manager, Business Development at Circle, added that the partnership will help broaden access to USDC and leverage Celo’s mobile-first user-base in regions where blockchain adoption is highest.
Stablecoin Development Gathers Pace
The stablecoin market is garnering greater attention than ever, said in an email Katie Evans, Chief Business Development and Communications Officer at blockchain platform Swarm.
Per Evans,
“This attention is only set to grow as we enter a new sustained bull run this year.”
As crypto markets continue to mature, she explained, users will increasingly rely on tools such as stablecoins to access digital assets.
Furthermore, stablecoins bring new economics on chain. Traders and yield farmers will utilize this more and more “as we go into a sustained bull run.”
Notably, she added,
“Stablecoins are one of the few things that have verifiably worked on chain and have weathered significant headwinds in the past two years.”
All this comes as legislators globally seek to enable greater sector growth through proactive regulation.
For example, the UK is looking to become a stablecoin leader. In the US, Patrick McHenry, chair of the House Committee on Financial Services, is sponsoring the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act. It makes provision for issuers and gives them regulatory protections and grounding.
Furthermore, the progress toward stablecoin regulation is attracting major financial institutions in financial centers such as Hong Kong. This region is launching a stablecoin sandbox managed by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). Singapore was one of the first jurisdictions to agree on stablecoin rules last year.
“While regulators have had their fingers burned by sharper ends of the crypto market, what is clear is that stablecoins are here to stay. As a result, we’re in a regulatory arms race to provide the most accepting environment for innovators while protecting consumers and market participants alike,” Evans commented.
PDX to Release Beta Version Banking and Payments Product
PDX Coin, a global payments and digital banking platform, announced that it has completed the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development phase for PDX Beam, a mobile application suite for crypto-to-fiat payments and banking.
It is a globally capable and compliant web and mobile-enabled crypto-to-fiat payment application built on the Polygon blockchain.
The product enables cryptocurrency to fiat transactions and advanced banking features, said the press release shared with Cryptonews.
PDX Global aims to allow hundreds of millions of retail users, institutions, merchants, vendors, and ecosystem partners to participate easily in the crypto economy with instant conversions between digital and fiat currencies.
PDX Global and PDX Coin will release the beta version of PDX Beam in March. It will operate at high speed, enabling instant real-time settlements in fiat currency and massively reduce customer and merchant transaction fees, the team behind it said.
It added that,
“PDX believes this is the first real challenge in decades to the Visa / Mastercard duopoly.”
During the beta test, consumers will be able to transact on Beam with over 200 retailers and merchants.
For the test, PDX is partnering with Cross River Bank, Kraken, Digibee, Unified Infotech, Intellicheck, and WalletConnect.
PDX will also integrate with POS systems Clover, Toast, and SuiteRetail.
PDX coin will be listed on Bitmart, LBank, and Coinstore, and following Beam beta test conclusion, Kraken and Binance.
In addition, PDX is working towards obtaining Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licenses in the EU, UK, and Hong Kong.
Finally, it is developing products and services across the DeFi and NFT spaces. It is prepping the upcoming launch of its new globally-capable betting and wagering platform, as well as its new high-performance proprietary blockchain protocol, Siberia.
