The Celo Foundation is pleased to announce that Circle will launch USDC natively on Celo to further everyday adoption of digital currencies and assets.
Celo claims it is a carbon-negative, mobile-first, EVM-compatible blockchain “built for the real world. USDC is the leading regulated digital dollar powering payments and access to a stable store of value worldwide.”
As a fully reserved stablecoin, USDC is always “redeemable 1:1 for US dollars.”
Circle’s mission to raise global economic prosperity “through the frictionless exchange of value closely aligns with the Celo ecosystem, which is to create the conditions of prosperity for all. The upcoming launch of USDC on Celo marks a significant step forward in both missions as Circle and Celo aim to leverage blockchain technology for a more open, equitable, and connected financial future.”
The Celo network claims that is home “to the industry’s fastest-growing mobile decentralized applications (dApps) and projects with a global user-base and over 1,000 projects in more than 150 countries, including mobile wallets Valora and Opera MiniPay.”
With a market cap of $135.16 billion, the rise in popularity of stablecoins as “a dominant real-world asset (RWA), allows for broad financial access and inclusion through easy, permissionless, and borderless transfers of assets onchain.”
As an industry provider for RWAs, Celo also “platforms diverse stablecoin use cases that are well suited for the addition of USDC, including remittances, holding savings, lending, disbursing aid, and sending peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions and cross-border payments, including access to various local currencies, such as the Mento Protocol’s cREAL and eXOF, which track the value of the Brazilian Real and the CFA Franc (used across 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa), respectively.”
Integrating USDC on Celo will “allow businesses and developers to provide their users around the world with fast, efficient, and secure payments and a stable store of value with digital dollars.”
Additionally, the Celo ecosystem will “benefit from the availability of institutional on-/off-ramps like Circle Mint, which is available to institutional and enterprise customers, and facilitates greater on-chain activity and the ability to convert USDC to and from local currencies.”
As one of Celo’s key features include paying for network gas fees (i.e. transaction costs) with stablecoins for familiar payments experience, cLabs “will share a proposal, for the Celo community’s consideration to enable users to pay gas with USDC.”
Isha Varshney, Head of Strategy and Innovation at the Celo Foundation, said:
“As a leader in driving real-world adoption of crypto, the Celo ecosystem is excited to bring more RWAs onchain through our partnership with Circle and the launch of USDC on Celo. We want to be the best ecosystem for stablecoins, which has proven to be among the industry’s prevailing use cases, as institutional investors come into Web3.”
Shamus Noonan, Senior Manager, Business Development at Circle, said:
“Circle is proud to join the mission-driven Celo ecosystem as a blockchain that’s known for providing fast, low-cost payments worldwide. This partnership will help broaden access for USDC and leverage Celo’s mobile-first user-base in regions where blockchain adoption is highest.”