Circle announced today the launch of its trademark stablecoin USDC on top of the Hedera network. This action is part of the multichain commitment that Circle announced earlier this year, with the objective of further expanding the reach of the currency in the cryptocurrency market. With the addition of USDC as the first stablecoin in its ecosystem, Hedera aims to start developing its own decentralized finance (defi) environment, and it is now offering more than $2.5 billion in ecosystem grants.
Circle to Support Hedera-Based USDC
Circle, one of the leading crypto payment companies, has announced the launch of usd coin (USDC) on top of Hedera, a high-throughput blockchain network. With this move, Circle customers with a Circle Account will have the opportunity of leveraging the stablecoin on top of Hedera network to make payments and settlements like with any other supported network.
The launch of the stablecoin on top of Hedera is part of an expansion strategy established by Circle earlier this year when it declared USDC would launch on ten more blockchains, with Hedera being one of the protocols in the list. Circle wants to establish its stablecoin as the defacto choice for decentralized finance (defi) protocols, and making it natively available in many of these chains is the first step to do that.
About the launch of Usdc in Hedera, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated:
Support for Hedera USDC means more people can take advantage of dollar digital currencies. With Hedera, enterprises and financial institutions can access deep liquidity across countries and platforms.
Hedera Welcomes USDC
Hedera is hoping to get a boost for its in-development defi strategy with the arrival of USDC on its platform. Hedera claims it has a great opportunity of becoming one of the most used chains in the USDC environment due to its high transaction output and low fees. On this, Shayne Higdon, CEO and Executive Director of the HBAR Foundation stressed:
With the USDC launch on the Hedera network, The HBAR Foundation is taking an important step toward fulfilling its mission to ease the development and launch of Defi applications on the network.
Hedera is now offering a $2.5 billion ecosystem grants program destined to build applications using Hedera’s blockchain. Some of these funds will surely be directed to defi applications, that will have now much more utility with a known, established stablecoin present in the platform.
USDC’s popularity has been growing during the last four months when it added more than $10 billion to its market cap, threatening the dominance of tether (USDT), the leading stablecoin.
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