Circle’s Stablecoin USDC Launches on Hedera Hashgraph’s Network

Fulfilling its promise to expand to more blockchain protocols in the coming months, USDT close rival USDC has recently launched on the Hedera network.

The announcement by popular stablecoin issuer Circle on Monday, October 18, makes the asset the first stablecoin to launch on the network.

According to the press statement, USDC users can now deposit, withdraw, and transfer USDC based on the Hedera network within their Circle accounts. Users can tap Hedera for various USDC payments and settlements.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts, with the launch of the USDC on the Hedera network, will have access to opportunities tied to this stablecoin, Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of Circle, said while commenting on the launch adding that,

“With Hedera, enterprises and financial institutions can access deep liquidity across countries and platforms, making USDC in Hedera an optimal asset for cross-border transactions and trades of all kinds.’’

Circle further said its integration with Hedera (HBAR) is in line with the main goals and objectives of the HBAR Foundation — a body created to support up-and-coming decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) projects that will be launched on the Hedera Hashgraph.

Giving its reasons for choosing Hedera as the supported network for USDC, Circle said the decision was due to the network’s interesting features, such as the ability to process a minimum of 10,000 transactions per second and the provision of real-time settlement, lower fees, and low bandwidth consumption.

Another top reason has been Hedera’s pivot towards a carbon-neutral network. The Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol has since signed a partnership with Terapass to purchase carbon offsets quarterly thereby reducing the environmental impact of its operations.

This carbon-neutral status has seen the Hedera Hashgraph protocol attract several platforms with over 410,000 accounts currently running and over $1.6 billion worth of transactions processed on the blockchain platform.

The Rise of Stablecoins

Recently, there has been increased interest in stablecoins, mainly due to their ability to cushion against the effects of volatility. Stablecoins are a kind of digital assets whose values are tied to fiat currencies like the U.S. Dollar and Euro. USDC is present in over 85 countries, and it's witnessing widespread adoption. Stablecoins are also being used to facilitate international trades.

In July, Circle partnered with MasterCard to enable individuals and businesses to utilize USD Coin (USDC) for transactions. Circle and Mastercard plan to use USDC to facilitate crypto-to-fiat conversions in a pilot program as part of the partnership.

“The engagement between Circle and Mastercard reinforces how USDC is growing its role in payments and commerce on the internet while building a vital bridge between digital currency payment systems and large, established payment networks,” Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire had said at the time.

USDC Gradually Becoming a Trailblazer

Circle has made significant moves after launching its token USDC in 2018 in a bid to make its version of the digital dollar the standard means of value transfer across the internet.

Besides Hedera, USDC is now supported across several blockchains, including Ethereum, Algorand, Solana, Stellar, and TRON. There are also plans for the digital asset to launch on networks like Celo, Tezos, Polkadot, Flow, Kava, Nervos, and Stacks in the future.