Goldman Sachs Group is a UUS-based investment bank and financial services provider. They are famously one of the largest financial groups in the world, with a real grip on the finance industry, offering services in banking, investment, securities, asset management, brokerage and, more and more frequently, cryptocurrency.

Indeed, Goldman Sachs have not fully immersed themselves within the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry just yet, though we do expect that in a few months time, Goldman Sachs will make their intentions a little more clear with regards to what they want to achieve in this area.

We do however see Goldman Sachs mentioned on a regular basis within crypto news, notably during an announcement that saw the launch of USDC, an Ethereum ERC-20 based stablecoin that was launched by Circle very recently. Circle, is a firm that is backed by both Goldman Sachs and Coinbase, hence where the association lies here.

Binance list USDC

In an announcement made yesterday, Binance have revealed that they have added USDC to their listing, making USDC tradeable against Bitcoin and Binances own native token, BNB.

According to CCN:

“In a statement, the cryptocurrency exchange indicated that trading of the USDC and bitcoin (USDC/BTC) pair, as well as the Binance token and the USDC (USDC/BNB) pair, will commence on November 17. Depositing the stablecoin which is pegged on a one-to-one ratio with the US dollar has, however, already started. Besides seeking to supplant the monopoly-like hold that the oldest USD-pegged stablecoin Tether (USDT) has on the crypto ecosystem, Coinbase indicated at the time that USDC would contribute towards a more transparent financial system across the globe.”

A surge in stablecoins

This is a part of what many are describing as a surge in stablecoins - USDC is just one of many stablecoins that have come to the fore of late, through inspiration from the world's most established stable coin, Tether. Why is this happening?

Simply put, stablecoins are used to allow people to make more calculated investments, instead of having to buy Bitcoin to purchase other altcoins, stablecoins offer investors a less volatile alternative, since stablecoins are made to have a value that is pegged to FIAT currency, so in the case of USDC, this coin is pegged to the value of the US Dollar, so 1 USDC is always equal to 1 USD. This means, people can make crypto to crypto purchases, without being subject to the volatility of traditional cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

This in turn, makes investment more accessible to everyone, and also hosts special advantages for institutional investors too. The surge we are seeing is simply as a result of a more mainstream adoption of crypto, which of course, is a good thing.