Kraken adds Support for Popular Stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC)

In an official statement released on January 7, 2019, Kraken announced that it will list USD Coin (USDC) starting tomorrow. USDC is a stablecoin backed by the CENTRE Consortium an organization founded by Coinbase and Circle.

USDC Lands on Kraken

Starting tomorrow, users of Kraken cryptocurrency exchange will have the option to hedge against the volatility of Bitcoin and Ethereum using the USD Coin stablecoin, a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin based on Ethereum’s ERC-20 protocol. Kraken will authorize deposits and withdrawals for USDC from approximately 2.30 pm UTC and the available trading pairs will be XBT/USDC, ETH/USDC, USDC/EUR, USDC/USD, and USDC/USDT.

To start, the stablecoin will be available only for basic trading services on Kraken, Kraken Pro, or using Kraken’s over-the-counter (OTC) trading platform. It won’t be possible to trade USDC using Kraken Futures or Margin Trading.

USDC was launched by CENTRE Consortium, an organization founded by Coinbase and Circle, two leaders in the cryptocurrency industry. Even if no reason has been specified, it can be assumed that the introduction of USDC within Kraken was made following Kraken’s recent purchase of Circle Trade.

After its launch in October 2018, USDC has undergone rapid development which has made it the second stablecoin by market capitalization. According to CoinMarketCap, USDC has a capitalization of $ 490,313,139 USD and according to Kraken reports, over $ 1.3 billion USDC has been issued with $ 830 million redeemed.

Although these figures are promising, the announcement of USDC’s integration into Kraken came the day after the announcement of the delisting from Binance. CZ, the CEO of the Malta-based exchange, announced yesterday on Twitter that the stablecoin would be delisted due to low trading volumes.

Kraken is Changing Policy

Kraken is one of the oldest bitcoin trading venues in the world and, although it does not have monstrous volumes compared to those of some of its competitors, it can count on an excellent reputation in terms of safety.

During 2019 however, it appears that the exchange has decided to make a change regarding its token listing strategy. After using a very conservative approach when it comes to adding tokens, Kraken seems to have opened its doors to more and more cryptocurrencies and now counts more than 120 trading pairs listed on the platform.

Starting last month, it also introduced the possibility of staking Tezos directly from the platform with earnings of up to 6 percent.