DFC

"Last week the Financial Services Agency (FSA) presented some ideas relating to cryptocurrency and stablecoins to the Financial System Council Working Group on Payment Services. The FSA is reluctant to allow banks to issue stablecoins other than trust banks. For trust bank issued stablecoins, it wants to relax the reserve requirements which currently require all assets to be held in bank demand deposits. However, it also wants to impose the travel rule, requiring KYC for trust bank issued stablecoin transfers."

"A stablecoin that is collateralized by real assets and structured correctly (e.g., MakerDAO) is not a stablecoin, but a unit trust."

"I can see why investors would want to be Basis stockholders, and receive seignorage, and I can see why there is a headlong rush to issue new cryptocurrencies. The rush to buy the currencies, other than to get money out of China and Russia, does not seem that sensible, especially given that so many have such clearly hazy promises of long-run value. (The white paper is interesting but this is worth $113 million? I'm in the wrong business!)"

"When the Tether (USDT) stablecoin's $1 peg broke down on Monday, traders looking for another dollar equivalent they could easily move between cryptocurrency exchanges had few other places to turn. One of those places was Bibox, the ninth-largest exchange by 24-hour adjusted volume, according to CoinMarketCap, which accounts for basically all trading – 96 percent at the time of writing – in the Gemini Dollar (GUSD), a dollar-pegged alternative to tether. (Gemini, the exchange founded by the Winkelvoss twins, does not currently offer trading pairs using its stablecoin.)"

At HBUS, the U.S. affiliate of the Singapore-based Huobi exchange, both deposits and withdrawals of USDT "have increased by over 10x over the last two days," a company spokesperson told CoinDesk. And the investors making deposits appear to be set on swapping it for TrustToken's TrueUSD (TUSD) stablecoin, which launched earlier this year. While HBUS is a small exchange, ranking only 129th by adjusted total volume according to CoinMarketCap, it appears to be one of the very few in the world where investors can trade TUSD for bitcoin (Bittrex being another rare example).

Nic Carter, a co-founder of Coinmetrics.io and partner at Castle Island Ventures, argued that stablecoins are currently used by traders who lack fiat on-ramps for regulatory arbitrage or want to avoid capital controls. “I don't believe traders will adopt the regulated alternatives, like the Gemini Dollar, which has anti-money laundering built into it," Carter told CoinDesk, adding: “To me, those aren't even playing in the same sandbox."

As per the firm’s announcement published October 15, BitPay has launched a new settlement option that would allow merchants to receive customer payments in both Gemini Dollars (GUSD) and Circle USD Coin (USDC). The move comes as a response to the growing demand for stablecoin, a cryptocurrency pegged to a stable asset.

"U.S. cryptocurrency exchange HBUS reportedly saw a massive surge in trading volume between Tether (USDT) and another USD-backed stablecoin TrueUSD. According to a spokesperson from HBUS, both deposits and withdrawals of USDT on the exchange “have increased by over 10x over the last two days,” with the majority of investors increasingly trading the controversial stablecoin for TrueUSD (TUSD), another blockchain-based stablecoin launched earlier this year as part of the TrustToken asset tokenization platform."

"According to the announcement, the HUSD solution aims to reduce the need to choose between multiple stablecoins, as well as to cut down transaction costs incurred when switching between these USD-pegged assets. It does so by automatically converting all stablecoin deposits on Huobi’s platform to its newly-launched HUSD “token,” which is native to the exchange and cannot be withdrawn. This platform token can be used for trading bitcoin, ether and any other digital asset listed on Huobi Global platform. HUSD can also be used at the time of withdrawals by converting itself back to the stablecoins, which could further be converted to fiat currencies."

Tether (USDT) tokens are flooding into a wallet address controlled by the Kraken exchange, one of the few places where the troubled stablecoin can be converted into U.S. dollars.

Specifically, Huobi will accept and store Paxos Standard (PAX), True USD (TUSD), USD Coin (USDC) and Gemini Dollars (GUSD), giving users a balance in HUSD as a kind of aggregator of all four.

"In sum, people think that the march from centralization to decentralization is linear. History teaches us that it is circular. The road back towards centralization goes through stablecoins. The stablecoins are not a bridge, they are a flight of Penrose stairs."

"Goldman Sachs-supported crypto company’s stablecoin registered remarkable growth figures since its launch three weeks ago. Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) is currently pegged to the U.S. dollar one-is-to-one."

"Larry Cermak at The Block is having great fun reporting on each new Bitfinex banking partner as it pops up. He tweeted about their account at HSBC — and this account inexplicably vanished soon after, and cash deposits to Bitfinex were suspended."

It's notable, then, that a wallet address controlled by Bitfinex has sent 630 million USDT to an address known as the "Tether treasury" in six large transactions over recent days. The first, of 200 million USDT, was sent the morning of Oct. 14, when Tether's dollar exchange rate was beginning to hit multi-month lows.

"You'll see that the trading pair with the second-highest volume on the exchange over the past 24 hours – nearly $48 million at the time of writing – is USDT/USD: the tether stablecoin, which aims for parity with the U.S. dollar, and the U.S. dollar itself. From this data point, you could be forgiven for concluding that Bitfinex's customers trade huge quantities of tethers for dollars, and vice-versa – more than they trade ether, XRP and EOS combined for dollars. But you'd be wrong."

"Crypto exchange Coinbase announced support for the Circle-issued stablecoin Tuesday. In a blog post, the exchange said U.S. customers outside the state of New York can now buy, sell, send and receive the USD//Coin (USDC) through the company's iOS and Android apps, as well as coinbase.com, which was first announced last month. It intends to offer the coin to customers in different regions going forward."

A new stablecoin is launching on the Stellar blockchain that's designed to hold its value with the Australian dollar (AUD) and being pitched for consumer and business uses. Novatti Group, an Australian online payments processor, will issue the Novatti AUD Utility Token beginning on November 19. The token will be backed 1-for-1 with AUD held in a trust.

"CoinMarketCap, the most-visited aggregator of cryptocurrency market data, has changed the way it uses data from the Bitfinex exchange in response to a report by CoinDesk. On Tuesday, CoinDesk pointed out that a trading pair shown on CoinMarketCap – seemingly, for trades between the tether stablecoin (USDT) and U.S. dollars – did not, in fact, represent a pair that's available for trading on Bitfinex. From looking at CoinMarketCap data, the ostensible pair appeared to be the second-highest by 24-hour volume on the exchange at the time the article was written."

"Tether Limited, the issuer of the USD-pegged USDT cryptocurrency, has destroyed 500 million units of the embattled stablecoin."

Tether, issuer of stablecoin USDT, says it has “redeemed a significant amount” of tokens from the circulating supply and will now “destroy” 500 million USDT from the Tether treasury wallet, in an official post published Oct. 24.

From Oct. 14, when USDT started to slip below $1.00, to Oct. 23, 680 million USDT were transferred to the company-controlled Treasury wallet. All of these transfers came from an address controlled by Bitfinex, a cryptocurrency exchange that overlaps with Tether in terms of ownership and management.

More than 100 unique stablecoins are currently in existence, almost double the number compiled last month, according to a new analysis and survey by blockchain entrepreneur Edan Yago and stablecoin resource Stable.Report.

"The Sila token is pegged to the US dollar via a centralized, 100% reserve held in USD-based instruments, and is guaranteed to be stable and retain its value even in the most extreme volatility environments. Perhaps most importantly, it forms the basis for a fintech API platform that will enable fast, regulatory-compliant payments, and other uses of money, with minimal reliance on the traditional banking system."

"Britain’s Royal Mint has frozen plans to launch a digital gold token after a partnership with U.S. exchange group CME failed and the government vetoed a plan to have the tokens trade on a cryptocurrency exchange, three sources told Reuters."

How does a stable coin make money for a VC? Let’s look into this and make sure everything adds up.