Where & How to Buy USDC (USDC) Guide

Fintech savings and spending app Eco plans to convert user account balances from U.S. dollars held at Prime Trust into USDC which will then be held at Zero Hash, a digital settlement service.Eco recently notified users of the planned move in a message and said new terms for conversion must be accepted by Oct. 24. Account features will be suspended if users don't agree to the terms.Eco’s USDC trials date back to 2020 when the company was in beta mode and Andy Bromberg took over the reins at the company. In July of last year, Eco raised $60 million to propel its high-yield USDC savings app.That round was led by private equity firm L Catterton and Activant Capital, Bromberg told CoinDesk at the time. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Lightspeed Venture Partners, LionTree Partners and Valor Equity Partners also chipped in.

Circle Internet Financial released a detailed – though unaudited – breakdown of its reserve assets for the firm’s USD coin (USDC) that showed $42.1 billion in short-term U.S. government bonds and $13.6 billion in cash.The asset breakdown, published in a blog post by the company Thursday, shows that as of June 30 Circle held $42.1 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds with an average maturity of 44 days, with the latest expiry date being Sept. 29. A bond is considered to be short-term when its maturity is less than three months. The document also listed the bonds’ individual identifier, the so-called CUSIP number.Circle also held $13.6 billion in cash at U.S.-regulated financial institutions, namely at the Bank of New York Mellon, Citizens Trust Bank, Customers Bank, New York Community Bank, Signature Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank and US Bancorp, according to the document.The $55.7 billion in assets Circle claims is slightly higher than the 55.4 billion USDC tokens in circulation. USDC is supposed to hold a 1:1 peg to the U.S. dollar.“While U.S. policymakers work to enact federal regulations for stablecoins, Circle continues to increase our transparency based on new industry innovations and what USDC holders within our ecosystem would like to see,” Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Fox-Green said in the post.The report was not audited, per the document, but it offered a more detailed glimpse into the reserve assets backing the stablecoin, the second largest by market cap and with a circulating supply of $55 billion.The report comes amid an ongoing credit crisis in the crypto markets, kick-started by the multibillion-dollar implosion of the Terra blockchain in May as the then-third-largest stablecoin depegged from the U.S. dollar.Crypto firms’ finances are under increasing scrutiny, with various crypto lenders and investment firms facing liquidity problems and applying for bankruptcy protection.While stablecoins are supposed to maintain a stable price anchored to an asset such as the dollar, several stablecoins lost their price peg in the Terra implosion aftermath, including Tron’s USDD and neutrino USD (USDN). The price peg of Tether’s USDT, the largest stablecoin with a $66 billion market capitalization, also wobbled for a brief period.Since May, USDC has gained in market share at the expense of USDT. Data by crypto market data tracker CoinGecko shows that while USDT had $17 billion in redemptions, USDC grew by $7 billion as holders flocked to the perceived safer asset.

After the collapse of the Terra ecosystem (which included its native token LUNA and its algorithmic stablecoin UST), the crypto community started to become more cautious about stablecoins, pushing large projects such as Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) to be more transparent about their finances. On July 14, Circle Internet Financial released its first monthly report on the USDC reserve assets it held in storage as of June 30, 2022. The company revealed that the USDC reserve is held solely in cash and 3-month U.S. Treasuries. This is important because it proves that it has enough liquidity to return all assets in a short period of time in case of a major panic attack or a negative event of any kind. When a coin lacks proper backing, pressure from clients trying to withdraw their funds and move to a more trustworthy asset could lead to a spiral effect that ends up in a collapse. Also, a lack of inmediate liquidity could heavily affect the investment strategies of affected parties. According to Circle’s report, its total reserves are $55.7 billion, divided into two parts; one of $42.122 billion in Treasury bonds and the second in $13.5 billion in cash invested in financial institutions regulated by the United States. Circle continues enhancing our transparency and today we shared a detailed look at the assets backing the USDC reserve. https://t.co/1tuaFWZhIO — Circle (@circlepay) July 14, 2022 This amount is on par with the USDC marketcap data showed by Coinmarketcap. Circle also provided a complete list of USDC reserve custodians. Circle Emphasizes Its Good Relationships With US Regulators Jeremy Fox-Geen, Chief Financial Officer at Circle, said in the company’s statement that since USDC’s launch in 2018, Circle had obtained monthly certifications from third-party and market-leading accounting firms on the adequacy of reserves and their composition. In addition, Circle has made sure to comply with all audits required by regulators along with their recommendations. “Circle’s audits contained within our public SEC filings are available here. Audits and attestations serve different purposes that are discussed in this blog, How to Build Trust.“ In this way, Circle and Tether continue to work their way through regulators to launch new stablecoins that maintain parity with other traditional currencies, as is the case with EUROC, Circle’s new stablecoin backed by the euro and Tether’s new stablecoin pegged to the Brazilian real. Stablecoin Projects Are Becoming More Transparent As mentioned above, stablecoin projects are becoming more transparent after the de-pegging of several tokens —algorithmic or not. The most prominent example is UST which literally dropped from 1 USD to less than 10 cents in a couple of days. A similar event happened with USDT, which lost its parity against the american dollar for a couple of days. Tether Limited, the company that manages Tether (USDT), said in mid-May that it was working to reduce the amount of commercial paper it held to $3.5 billion by the end of July. A very significant amount considering that by the end of 2021, the company had more than $24 billion in its reserves. Assurance Opinion Once Again Re-affirms Tether’s Reserves Fully Backed; Reveals Significant Reductions in Commercial Paper and Increase in U.S. Treasury Bills https://t.co/8qVSQFQBeY — Tether (@Tether_to) May 19, 2022 In addition, the company announced that its goal was to reduce its paper reserves to 0. All this helped reduce the nervousness of many investors, and the coin started to regain Trust and value, returning to the average threshold.