Coinbase and Circle have announced today a new and native stablecoin (USDC) on the Coinbase platform.

USD Coin will be backed by US Dollars and transacted on the Ethereum blockchain.

New Coin On The Block

Cryptocurrency exchange goliath Coinbase announced today a collaboration with Circle, which they have dubbed CENTRE, and introduced yet another new ‘stablecoin‘ into the cryptocurrency economy, called ‘USD Coin (USDC).’

Circle is the parent company of the Poloniex exchange and offers USDC trading pairs for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Tether (USDT) on its platform.

USD Coin is live on the Coinbase platform.

Balancing Act

The function of a stablecoin is to create a digital token that is pegged to a stable amount. In the case of USDC and nearly all the other stablecoins in the cryptocurrency market, the stable amount is the US Dollar.

The advantages of using USDC are that it allows for liquidity in a (usually) highly-volatile market that does not require the user to change all the way back into fiat currency. USDC can be used for any large and small transactions and will also be integrated into decentralized applications (dApps) on the Ethereum blockchain.

New stablecoins have been all the rage since Tether (USDT) had a meltdown recently among insolvency rumors, which caused the price to dip to $0.87 — in turn creating a huge premium on cryptocurrency prices. The wavering faith in USDT’s actual dollar reserves has caused opportunities for new coins to steal the spotlight.

It is still unknown if one coin will come to take over the whole market, or if multiple stablecoins will be able to interact with one another in harmony.

What are your thoughts on the newly released stablecoins like USDC, TUSD, or PAX? Will they all be able to coexist? Let us know in the comments below!