Bitcoin Stablecoin Launches First BRC-20 Stablecoin

Stablecoin — a stablecoin-as-a-service provider and fiat to crypto on-ramp — has launched the first-ever dollar-pegged stablecoin issued directly on the bitcoin blockchain.

The token, the stablecoin USD ($USD), is based on the emerging BRC-20 token standard, around which several bitcoin-based memecoins popped up earlier this month.

USD and the meme economy of course

per a do As of Thursday, the stablecoin is redeemable 1 to 1 for USD collateral held at FDIC-insured banks managed by its custodian, Prime Trust. The custodian is subject to external audit by the network firm, a digital asset accounting group, to ensure that the circulating tokens are always backed 1-to-1.

Tokens can be issued and redeemed via dollar transfers over Fedwire and SWIFT, or through rival stablecoin transfers including Circle’s USDC, or Tether’s USDT. Direct issuance is available to KYC-verified users in 200 countries including 44 US states.

The top two stablecoins alone account for a $110 billion+ market cap, but none of their issuers have announced compatibility with bitcoin yet. As of May 24, the market capitalization of the USD stablecoin was just $101,000, but the total supply of the token – including non-circulating coins – is humorously designed to be 69,420,000,000,000.

Mim numbers reflect what is supported by the market BRC-20 Token Standard, which was heavily used to launch the speculative Memecoin when it rose to prominence in early May. Tokens such as ordi, piza, pepe, and others have made up a cumulative BRC-20 market cap of over $447 million so far, according to brc-20.io.

BRC-20 is an experimental standard for issuing alternative assets using bitcoin ordinals, The latter protocol exploded in popularity earlier this year as a method of issuing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on bitcoin, and has already turned bitcoin into the second most popular blockchain for such assets, according to sales. according to statistics cryptoslam,

stable coins on bitcoin

Stablecoin co-founder and CEO, Corey Hoang, said in a press release that he met BRC-20, the creator of Domo, at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami and told him about his stablecoin plans.

“They thought it was great and funny how we were building a stablecoin on top of bitcoin to enable bitcoin trading … with a stablecoin built on top of bitcoin,” Hoang said. “I’m still laughing about it to this day, actually.”

In the Ethereum ecosystem, the stablecoin is used extensively to power decentralized finance, providing the backbone for trading dollars through blockchain smart contracts for other crypto assets. However, a reports Earlier this month, Bitfinex reported that the BRC-20 does not support smart contracts, further limiting the use cases for bitcoin-based stablecoins and tokens.

While unveiling the token standard, Domo also accepted Issuing assets on bitcoin is not a new idea, and that taro – A Lightning Network-based alternative – “obviously a better solution.”