Circle works with a wide variety of regulatory agencies around the world. I'm not aware of anything the SEC has said publicly about USDC.
We work with a number of banking partners around the world but generally don't publicize this information.
Circle will begin publishing its USDC-related reports on centre.io after public launch. We have engaged Grant Thornton LLP to apply on a monthly basis certain agreed-upon procedures to assist management regarding the accuracy of USD reserve balances for the USD stablecoin tokens issued as set forth by the Company.
We will hold exactly one USD for one token. In the future, we may also invest these fiat funds in highly-liquid, AAA-rated fixed income securities.
The coins minted by both Circle and Coinbase are mutually fungible. You could acquire USDC from one and redeem it at the other. Support for multiple issuers is an important differentiator for USDC.
We considered a wide range of platforms before making a decision. At this point, however, Ethereum is really the only viable option particularly from a security and wallet support perspective. That said, we have been developing the technology in such a way that it can be adapted to other blockchains in the future should CENTRE choose to do that. However, while incredibly important, the contract implementation isn't nearly as much work as the legal, operational, risk and audit components necessary to connect the traditional financial system to cryptocurrencies in an open and compliant way. Should CENTRE choose to provide an implementation on another blockchain, much of those other components would simply apply with little modification.
As you can imagine, Circle maintains fairly sophisticated minting operations able to execute around the clock. All that is necessary for coins to be minted is for Circle to broadcast a properly signed transaction.
Now, of course, Circle can't just mint a limitless supply because we have a minting allowance set by CENTRE. While CENTRE itself can't mint coins, they do operate a minting allowance system with around the clock availability which can grant Circle a additional allowance per a ruleset to effectively manage risk.
This might seem to be getting into the weeds a bit but support for multiple minters (Circle and Coinbase here for example) is a significant differentiator between USDC and other reserve backed stablecoins.
Circle holds one dollar for every dollar minted, we do not run a fractional reserve. The CENTRE Consortium holds minters (of which Circle is one) to strict auditing requirements. While this information is regularly published, you can see all minting and burning operations (as well as all transfers and other token operations) in realtime on the Ethereum blockchain. See etherscan: https://etherscan.io/address/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb... There are always as many USDCs in circulation as there are fiat dollars backing them up in traditional bank accounts. The only way minters produce more in a 1 to 1 manner is if someone wires traditional dollars in. Likewise, Circle will burn USDCs in a 1 to 1 manner as requests for traditional fiat dollar withdrawals are processed.
Thanks for the comment - I am still with Circle, and indeed we still use the bitcoin blockchain behind the scenes. We're also working on a smart contract platform called Spark. More to come on that in a bit.
We work with a number of banking partners around the world but generally don't publicize this information.
Circle will begin publishing its USDC-related reports on centre.io after public launch. We have engaged Grant Thornton LLP to apply on a monthly basis certain agreed-upon procedures to assist management regarding the accuracy of USD reserve balances for the USD stablecoin tokens issued as set forth by the Company.
We will hold exactly one USD for one token. In the future, we may also invest these fiat funds in highly-liquid, AAA-rated fixed income securities.
The coins minted by both Circle and Coinbase are mutually fungible. You could acquire USDC from one and redeem it at the other. Support for multiple issuers is an important differentiator for USDC.
More information on this is available at https://support.usdc.circle.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600152783...