Circle and Coinbase to dissolve Centre; USDC will remain fully available

Coinbase and Circle said in a blog post on Aug. 21 that Centre — the consortium originally responsible for the USDC stablecoin — will be dissolved.

The two companies said that Centre will end its operations due to changing regulatory conditions. They said that Centre was originally intended to serve as a joint, self-managed governance body for USDC and explained that this is no longer necessary thanks to clearer stablecoin regulations in the U.S. and globally.

Coinbase and Circle said that USDC will instead be governed and operated in-house by Circle going forward. They said that this approach will streamline operations and governance, as Circle will issue USDC, hold smart contract keys, and work to comply with regulations around reserve governance and additions on new blockchains.

The change will also see Coinbase take an equity stake in Circle. The companies said that the investment will allow the companies to have a “greater strategic and economic alignment” and that they will maintain a commercial relationship.

USDC will become increasingly available

USDC will remain fully available. Coinbase confirmed in a statement to CryptoSlate that there will be no changes to the availability of USDC on its trading platform.

The two companies also said that USDC will be available on six new blockchains in September and October 2023. It is unclear which blockchains might gain their own version of USDC, though Circle said in September 2022 that it would natively support Arbitrum, Cosmos, NEAR Protocol, Optimism, and Polkadot. Not all of those additions have occurred, though Arbitrum received its own version of USDC in June 2023 and some of the above chains already feature bridged USDC.

USDC is currently the second largest stablecoin by market cap, with a total supply of $26 billion — surpassed only by Tether (USDT), which has a capitalization of $83 billion. USDC is also is the sixth largest cryptocurrency overall by that measure.

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